I think it's weird too... and would rather think the right course of action would have been environmental activists suing governments to enforce them to curtail companies by demanding law that make the companies adhere to the implementation of the Paris agreements. Not activists suing companies directly.
However, it seems greenhouse gas emissions is the new tobacco smoke. It's now considered so harmful (and in violation of human rights laws) companies should limit their exhaust directly, no matter the responsibilities of governments and clients of said companies. If this holds, it's not only Shell that's going to have problems.... it will be all oil industries, probably Europe-wide and I guess also other polluters.... Electricity companies burning fossil fuels, steel mills, other manufacturing industries, animal farming, living things breathing, like humans :P

Why do prisons need to make money in the first place? Wait, you say prisons are like businesses but with a license for legal slave labour? No wonder U.S. society is f*cked up!

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'western' at this point. The European car market definitely can't be compared to the American obsession with SUVs. Sure, there is a niche market for truck-like vehicles, but as a continent with a much higher population density and less 'wild area', the need in classic use cases for SUVs is much smaller. Also, smaller streets or even outright car-discouragement in many larger and smaller cities (due to historical and political reasons) make SUVs a lot less practical as an 'every day' vehicle, not to mention the based on weight progressive taxation systems and pricey fuel. This all leads to more demand on the lean and small side... not on the larger, heavier and more expensive side. And Europen car manufacturers (and also Asian ones) tend to deliver at that front.

I have Firefox as default and every time I open Edge the same type of nag appears in there... Seems to be the nature of the 'beast'. Besides, you know, you can turn it off, right (in either browser)?

My argument to that would be: Do it if you can!* The 'should' is reserved for those that implement. Not those that discover. There is nothing wrong with expanding knowledge.

*Now, there are a few exceptions. But for those we have ethics and they can be narrowly defined, like 'do not kill or gravely harm fellow humans'. And scientists that do experiments of which ethics are questionable, most of the times know that before they even seriously begin their research, or they are lousy scientists...

"Just because I can".

-The answer to pretty much every bit of progress in human history (arguably).

We had a showering of engine parts in Meersen, the Netherlands two days ago when a motor of a Boing 747-400 cargo plane blew up after take-off from Maastricht airport.
Both incidents surely are unrelated... but Boeing is definitely catching a lot of 'flak' lately.

Well, that's a solid answer given. Also, you can irreversibly physically damage electric generating equipment by introducing it to a brown-out. For example if the voltage drops too low, a still connected generator can melt its coils due to the larger amperage through them (wire thickness needed is proportional to amperage of the current flowing through it) to keep total power ( voltage multiplied by amperage) up. So everything that doesn't disconnects and shuts down, gets fried.

I can assure you, you can. Previous summer we had a 37 C (100 F) heat wave and just last week we had a -15 C (5 F) week of winter weather in the Netherlands. Never was there any doubt about Electric grid reliability.

My app of choice: POTS. Nuff said.

I rarely check the other 11 social messaging apps I have installed unless someone calls me that I have to take a look or when I'm bored. Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram, Discord, Slack, Hanguits, the SMS app, Meet, Facebook messager, Zoom, Jitsi...Oh.. the SteamApp, so that makes 12...

That stance is plain greed, just there. Maybe even insidious. I can accept you want anonymity vs. the 'system'/all third parties and even consider it a right. But anonymity vs. your communications partner is a damn degraded form of communication and is why spam, advertising and unsolicited mail 'works'. Plus it promotes all kinds of nastyness, like identity theft. At least consider a certification system for mutual trust between the communication partners (like SSL/HTTPS for web traffic). So, no anonymous accounts in my book. I want to know who I'm dealing with! Come back when I can.

Power generation of windmill in question (at optimum efficiency ?): 13 MW
Percentage of 'full capacity' days at sea (estimation): 50%. (To compare; on land, the windiest places in the Netherlands have strong breezes 45% of the year).
Projected production in GWh: 56.94
Average household electricity use in the Netherlands: 2,800 KWh.
Number of homes powered in that case: 20,034.

So I guess they measured in American homes? Of course if you'd play with the estimations in here it could go both ways.. a factor 2 is not significant enough...

I'm not yet sure if I wholeheartedly agree with GP but, it would set some limits. For live performances, yes, you'd get a usual fee as per number of hours preparation and performing. No matter if you play a cover or original work. The fee could still be negotiable, so performances with a higher demand in the market could ask a higher up-front fee than those not. Every person involved in such a show of course have their own wage. Many are fixed by their contract, job description and thus their expected performance. And when they go 'above and beyond' (like overtime and/or producing more results), they should expect extra pay. But those of creative performances where each performance can differ to the next, could float depending on the quality delivered, if the performers want to enter an agreement in which they are evaluated as such.

Then, for creation of new works (whether it's by inspiration or aspiration), you could imagine a one-time fee to the creator is in order, which can be very large due to perceived popular demand, especially for established creators with a large fanbase, but it will be one time fee. When it's set, we know how much it costs to 'buy out' a certain creative work and when enough 'copies' have sold to cover the costs, the material enters public domain. Remaining value stays on a balance sheet somewhere and has to be property taxed so the fee can't be set too high, else the entity holding the work will go bankrupt. When a work then isn't or can't be transferred to another entity for x clamshells which can not be more than the remaining value, it also slips into public domain. No zombie works allowed.

The value of a creative work can be limited by the amount of time and resources spent to get to make the creative work. Time spent, of course, has a limit of your 'usual' lifetime for your first created work, substracted with hours unavailable to spend on creative works or some other metric, set by law and if you can validate the claim your first work also is your 'life's work'. If you create multiple works, you can not count your hours double but you can split them. No problem working at multiple projects, just not exactly at the same time (to create asks your undivided attention). Resources spent can be limited to services and raw materials spent creating the work and handed over when the fee is negotiated (so no stating the work consumed 3 gold bars to create when the gold isn't an actual part of the work, handed over). Unless you can successfully claim there is waste, in which case the value of that waste has to be evaluated and deducted...

Well, that's five minutes spent on how such a system could work. When we have centuries, as with the current system, we could figure out something reasonable, I think.

That's not how fundamental research works. That's never how fundamental research has worked. Fundamental research has always been a collective effort, funded by governments and crazy individuals chasing dreams, not for profit but for science. It's when the fundamental breakthrough happens that industry and capitalism kick in to do applied research on it and make money out of it. Stop believing in de delusion that corporate spending can induce fundamental discoveries. It can not, for it can't explain the costs to the stakeholders of such corporations and it will always be seen as frivolous spending. So asking 'wall street' for fundamental research funding is like asking a religious person to forsake their faith. It's fundamentally incompatible.

Almost every single scientific breakthrough in human history has not been induced by for-profit means. And the U.S. contribution to science was largest when it was a military and government thing, before full blown laissaz-faire capitalism was the norm in political thought, not the exception. Nowadays it's in sharp decline and countries like China and collaborations like CERN and ITER take over. Some of them, the U.S. has still funding in. But for the past few decades I've only seen a decline on the U.S. front in fundamental research where instead we should ramp up to tackle major problems like climate change (doesn't matter what is causing it by this point, it has to be stopped!) or think about the means of expansion for the human race. We are a species of explorers, always have been. Even more so than warriors. To forsake that and hole ourselves up on this little blue marble is against our nature.

And I'm sick of the every time brought up straw man of research grant corruption. If your society is so bad that corruption is a major issue with government spending, for gods sake, change your society and become more civilized! There are countries out there who do much better.

Future Airstrip One scenario detected..