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Comment Re:Some People Will Never Be Happy (Score 2) 103

The legislation introducing tax breaks and similar subsidies for PHEVs was argued for by larger savings in gasoil use. They don't realize, so what's to do about the subsidies? Why should PHEVs in some places get the same subsidies as EVs, despite only saving 19% instead of 100% in local emissions?

Comment Re:AI-hallucinated citations :o (Score 1) 39

Chatbots are trained to never admit that they don't know, and to always be willing to be convinced that the person talking to them is correct.

No, that's exactly not what chatbots are doing. Chatbots have no concept of right and wrong. Chatbots know that given the frequency of words already in the conversation and their probalistic neighborhood to elements in their body of data, which words are most probable to come next. And if there is not enough data fitting their current state, they randomly add words, because no possible next word presents them with a high probability.

Comment Re:Irreversibly? (Score 4, Informative) 77

Once you have a plant cover, it starts to be self-reinforcing, as the plants already grown provide shadow cover for the next generation. The pioneering plants get replaced by other species later, once the local micro climate has changed, and then you get an even more complex and more stable ecosystem. Of course, this takes many decades to establish completely, but it might be that it is self-sustaining much earlier.

Biologists study this all the time. Spoil tips, abandoned crop fields, volcanic ash, or the charred remains of a bush fire, they are ideal research objects on how Nature reclaims those areas. And the time line is vastly different depending on the environment, between a few years, and centuries. Until an oak forest has naturally regrown and gets into balance, it takes about 1000 years.

Comment Re:Language changes (Score 1) 192

In the U.S., "champagne" simply means sparkling wine, in other places, it means "wine grown and produced in the Champagne region". Same with Parmesan or Budweiser or something.

And there isn't even a clear cut difference between the two, and especially in German, where many food items have different names depending on the region (don't you ever trust a dictionary, because for many food items, there is no Standard German word), a vote like the one the European Parlament just did does not work. The famous "Berliner" (jelly donut) is a prime example, which is not called "Berliner" in Berlin itself, but a Pfannkuchen (pancake), while the pancake is called Eierkuchen (egg cake) here.

Grützwurst, Erbswurst, Bettwurst - all words using the German word for sausage (Wurst), but none of them is made primarily from meat or does even contain any meat at all, and the Bettwurst is not edible, but a bed accessoire. And Burger? How about Bitburger (a beer) and Burger (a bakery and a trademark for different types of bread)? Do they have to change names? What about Schnitzel (cutlet)? How do we call Rübenschnitzel (sugar beet pulp) and Holzschnitzel (wood chips) going into the future?

This was a vote where the main goal was to "own the Left", without any thought about the consequences.

Comment Re:eh (Score 2) 192

The problem is that in German, it's not Hamburger Steak, it's Hamburger Beefsteak, something everyone in Hamburg would understand. In German, Steak means the meat, and Beefsteak means the patty - quite confusing for someone native to English, for whom "beef" means meat from a cow. But when the words were borrowed by the Germans, they moved their meaning.

Comment Re:Coal maybe, not gas (Score 1) 70

Problem with your calculation is that it is already outdated. Germany right now is at 57.4% renewables for the whole year of 2025, and not just a good month. The worst month in Germany in 2024 was November with only 45.1% Renewables, but two month, February and April (yes! those two!) came in at more than 60% Renewables. The whole of 2024 finished at 55.8% Renewables for electricity production.

By the way, February 2025 was the worst so far at only 42.1% - completely different than February 2024. On the other hand, June 2025 broke the record with 73.4% Renewables, while all three, August, September and October 2025 so far are above 60% Renewables.

If you want a look at the numbers, here they are.

Comment Re:Engineering departments (Score 3, Interesting) 86

That's not exactly right. Engineering is Applied Science. You don't have many scientific breakthroughs by engineers, because that's not what they are trained for. They are very good at combining things we already know into new technology. They are not very good at spotting where we don't know things. There are many similarities though. Both need a solid background in Mathematics, and a thorough overview of Physics as we know it right now, as it applies to their field of work, and many problems can be solved with both the engineering and the physics approach, but calling Physics "obsolete" because we have Engineering, is like calling R&D in a company "obsolete", because we have skilled craftsmen.

Comment Re:Just natural selection at work (Score 1) 11

That's how evolution works.

While this part is correct, the second

Those less suited to the environment die or are killed. The offspring with better suited genetic variations succeed. Due to better camouflage.

has nothing to do with the article at hand.

What you are describing is a genetic drift within a species, like the Peppered moth, caused by changing environmental conditions.

What the article is talking about is species disappearing completely, and the fact that it's the most colorful ones. The Peppered moth never disappeared. It even changed back to a majority of lighter colored specimens when industrial smoke no longer darkened the birch bark.

Comment Re:Just natural selection at work (Score 3, Informative) 11

Actually, it's colorful species dying out, not adapting to a less colorful environment.

[...] Ricardo Spaniol from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul discovered in 2019 that the most colorful Amazonian species often disappear first after deforestation, probably because of the loss of native vegetation and increased exposure to predators.

Comment Re:The stupid it hurts. (Score 1) 146

The current prices for battery storage are US$75/kWh. Hence 2 TWh cost about US$150 billions. (I just checked, I can order a 4 kWh LiFePo4 pack for less than 300 EUR at Amazon - rated at 6000 charging cycles.) The Australian Health budget is about 112 AUD billion for 2024/25, or about US$60 billion. This means that the Australian public health spending buys us 2 TWh battery storage every three years, given current end user prices at Amazon in the EU.

I also seriously doubt your 15 years figure. Current technology degrades about 20% after 3000 charging cycles. Given that the 2 TWh number is a 3 day storage, you would need to fully recharge them about 120 times a year at a maximum, which means that after 25 years, you still have 80% of the capacity left. This means you have to add 20% of the capacity after 25 years or do a complete refresh every 125 years - and that means that all technology development stops right now.

Comment Re:Neanderthals lived all across Europe and Asia (Score 1) 80

You do realize that I was mocking the previous poster?

By the way, do you know where the name "Neanderthal" comes from? The valley (Thal, today's spelling Tal), was named after a guy named Joachim Neander, who was working at the Latin grammar school in nearby Düsseldorf in the 17th century. He also was a prolific writer of famous church hymns, including Praise to the Lord, the Almighty. His name in turn was changed by his grandfather, Johann Joachim Neumann, who also was a scholar. In the fashion of the time, he translated his name Neumann (German for New Man) into Greek: Neoandros, or for better pronunciation for his fellow countrymen, Neander. Neanderthal hence means "Valley of the New Man", and this is exactly where the fossils of a hithertho unknown, new species of Man were discovered in 1856.

Comment Re:People Hate Science (Score 5, Informative) 213

The Science is the religion of the Left, even though 50% of peer-reviewed papers can't be reproduced.

Nice strawman here. If Science is religion to you, you are doing it wrong. If you want eternal truths, Science is not the way to go. Yes, 50% of all scientific papers are non-reproducable. And this is a problem exactly why? Someone makes an observation, tries to enumerate the ways he got to that observation, and then publishes it. Someone else tries to reproduce the observation, and sometimes, it works, sometime it does not. How do you know you got a real observation and not a fluke, if you don't reproduce it? And what would the point of reproducing it if we knew the result beforehand?

What you want to be a weakness is actually the strength of Science. We learn from mistakes, and for that to work, we have to produce mistakes. We err up.

I guess the main problem you have with Science is that it is not a good negotiation partner. Carbon dioxide happens to absorb electromagnetic waves at 4.26 micrometers and at 15 micrometers, and there is nothing you can do about it. It makes no sense to blame Carbon dioxide to be a supporter of the Left. It makes no sense to offer billions of dollars to prove otherwise. All you can do is look at the consequences and find out what this means for you.

Consumerism and travel turned out to be a pale substitute for living in a real community.

It is still a better substitute compared to live alone as an hermit for most people. And people indulging themselves in consumerism and travel live longer and healthier than most hermits. And then there is the question, what a "real community" actually means, and you will notice that as soon as your community grows beyond a certain size, the differences about the nature of "real community" become insurmountable, and the once real community breaks up and becomes no longer real. And you will notice that any community which seems to work seamlessly for a generation, and maybe a second generation fizzles out in the third, something we know since at least we have written records. It has nothing to do with Science, or the Left, or whatever strawman you want to blame it on. It seems a part of human nature.

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