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Trump’s Bizarre Rants Over Wind Power Are More Ominous Than You Think (newrepublic.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/8795973

Archived copies of the article (podcast wrapper): [archive.today](Trump’s Bizarre Rants Over Wind Power Are More Ominous Than You Think) web.archive.org

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 7 months ago

I'm so fucking sick of seeing this dude's face or gaping mouth wherever I go. Can he just fucking disappear?

[–] [email protected] 36 points 7 months ago (2 children)

This shouldn't surprise anyone. The guy loves coal, oil, and gas, he hates anything renewable with almost the same passion as he hates immigrants. He will literally defund the EPA because in his mind the environment is fake news and because it will make him popular amongst rich business owners who get even richer from deregulation.

[–] zigmus64 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think you attribute more intent to his actions than he deserves. He “loves” coal, oil, and gas because that’s what his base wants to hear. Defunding the EPA has nothing to do with his pro or anti-climate goals. It has everything to do with the fact that the EPA is a regulatory body that increases costs for industry. Fewer road blocks, better cash flow.

It’s not that he loves or hates any of these things… it’s all in your last sentence. The rest is just a means to an end. He just doesn’t care beyond the fact that it might keep him from him getting what he wants

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So Trump is basically like an AI that has no will of his own and is just a predictive algorithm that is trained on his fan base? That makes a surprising amount of sense when listening to his speeches, they make as much sense as a tripping LLM that was mostly trained on other AI generated text.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

And the fan base is trained on him. So Trump's verbiage is like a preview of the internet to come: crappy articles written by AI trained on crappy articles written by AI, and reality ever receding.

[–] disguy_ovahea 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Not to mention that Harold Hamm, the oil magnate, is one of Trump’s largest donors.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/06/politics/trump-fundraiser-florida-rnc/index.html

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

At this point I'd be surprised if there was a single oil billionaire who hasn't donated millions to his campaigns.

[–] flux 17 points 7 months ago

I've found Trump's hatred of windmills fascinating. It all goes back to a case against the Scottish government. He expressed his concerns about the wind farm in April 2006 stating that "I want to see the ocean, I do not want to see windmills."Trump International Golf Club Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Maybe if enough people can point out to him that there's only like 3 letters of difference between "wind power" and "white power", he might have a change of heart and decide it's not so bad after all.

[+] [email protected] -20 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Wind and solar plants should be in areas where they make the most sense. You cannot create a resilient electrical grid with just solar and wind. Sorry, but there is no economical way to do that. Even with gas plants as back up, this is also not economical, because you need redundant power plants to fill in the gaps left by renewables. Take a look at Germany. No more cheap Russian natural gas. They shut down their nuclear power plants, and now they will have to import energy from France's nuclear power plants. Wind and solar are not reliable energy for many places in Europe and North America. Transmission lines need to built which cost a lot of money, and they are a liability that needs to be replaced every 40 years. In the US, a state like Texas does not need solar or wind. It is a state with plenty of natural gas and constant generation is necessary for profitability. Yes, Texas leads in renewables within, but it doesn't need it for energy.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

German here. We import power because it is cheaper then nuclear. Also we export more than we import. The majority of imported energy is from renewables from Norway and Sweden.

[+] [email protected] -7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Germany will be highly reliant on other countries for their energy needs. Wind and solar are intermittent energy. With no cheap Russian piped gas, Germans would be paying higher for peaker plants and backup natural gas plants. Green energy isn't reliable for heavy industry. This is a permanent deindustrialization. Wind doesn't always work and some weeks there is extensive cloud cover. Sure, a desert would be consistent with solar because it has minimal cloud cover all year long, and you plan for that, but Germany is not ideal for that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Germany does not aim to be energy-self-sufficient, it aims to be integrated into a European grid, which is self sufficient.

Wind and solar give plenty of energy, storage is the trick. The need for huge storage goes down in a European grid, because there are always parts with enough wind and sun.

[–] DelightfullyDivisive 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I would love to understand this better. I have worked in power generation before (writing maintenance software for a nuclear plant, so I picked up a few things). I don't understand the distribution side at all, though.

Can you suggest a book or article on the subject?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

This particular detail I picked up at a recent scientific conference on precisely this topic. It was a reoccurring theme across several talks. I am not aware of any general book on this, though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You cannot create a resilient electrical grid with just solar and wind.

People still saying that, despite entire countries running on it already?

[–] DelightfullyDivisive 3 points 7 months ago

Renewables are an important part of the mix, but seems like nuclear is more important right now. It's the best way to move industry away from coal and gas in the long run, though it's something we in the US should have started on 30 years ago.

I'm aware that nuclear power has it's own set of complications, but they're more solvable than reducing emissions without it