As a Norwegian, I'm shocked every time I go further south in Europe. The smell of gas and diesel in every city ...

After most folks have switched to electric cars here - I'm acutely aware of the difference when going abroad.

> Pick a random European nation and tell me the longest drive a citizen would have to make to get to their nation's capital city.

Norway.

Driving from Hammerfest to Oslo will take you 23 hours if you drive via Finland and Sweden.

If you keep within Norway, approximately 32 hours.

Thing is, coal is expensive. Solar is cheap. If the US goes all in on coal, oil, gas, etc. - she'll lose.

China has built out massive amount of solar and wind, and hunkering down on batteries. That means they get massive amounts of essentially free electricity.

If the US hunkers down on labour intensive, expensive, polluting stuff - then all the worse for her.

First off: I'm not a climate change denier. Secondly: I do worry about the current US administration that seems to be entirely unhinged.

However, I think climate change is a solved problem, it's just the implementation that takes a bit of time. Thing is, solar panels have gotten dirt cheap. Battery prices are also plummeting. The cheapest electricity you can get at the moment is .. solar. It pays itself back within a relatively short time period. It's an upfront investment - but the return on investment is so massive that it just makes sense to build it out.

Which is why China has been doing exactly that for some years now. Which is why India is investing massively. Which is why Chile is building out in the Atacama desert. Which is why southern europe has built out quite a bit. Which is why Australia has built out massively. .. and which is why we're now seeing Africa importing quite massive amount of solar panels.

Of course, the objections about "what to do when the sun don't shine?" is entierly valid. The answer to that question, however, is batteries. Those prices are also plummeting. I expect to replace the batteries I bought in 2020 in about 2030 - and pay the same price for twice the capacity. They'll be cheaper in reality - due to inflation.

China is currently generating about 20% of their needs from wind+solar. We only need to go 5 years back for that to be less than 5%. In another 5 years, I'll be very surprised if they haven't reached 35-40%.

There's of course the problem of grid inertia. Grid-following is nowhere near as good as grid forming. We do, however, have the technology to fix that too. From flywheels to grid-forming inverters.

Give it 2-3 more years and "everyone" will see that it's solved. Give it 5-6 years and we'll be "on schedule". Give it 10 years and we'll all be surprised that we're ahead of schedule.

And we won't even need government incentives. It'll just be everyone doing what makes economic sense. Unless actively sabotaged through tariffs.

Oh gods no. Drip coffee beats americano any day of the week. Yech. I avoid americano like the plague.

We finally got a drip coffee machine in addition to the espresso machine at work. If I want espresso - I'll have that. If I want a nice "regular black coffee" - drip coffee any day.

> If EVs were the end-all-be-all that every EV pimp on the planet says they are, then there shouldnâ(TM)t be any risk. I mean, the Marketing department would never lie, right?

Hi there; Norwegian here. Not an EV pimp, but rather a guy that bought a used Tesla Model S 2014 back in 2018.

In my "price range", I've never had a nicer car to drive. It's fast, it's fun. Charging has never been a problem for me, but I can imagine it being troublesome for folks who drive long distances often. I charge during the night. If I go on a lengthy trip, I just stop for a bit at superchargers. They're "everywhere" in Norway, so whenever I need a break - I just pop by the closest supercharger and go to the loo, walk around a bit, and 20 minutes later I keep driving.

Of course, a 20 minute break every time you want to refuel might sound extremely annoying to folks that drive long distances often enough that this causes several long breaks a day for them. For me, it means I have to take a break to recharge maybe 5 times a year. I don't drive long distances often enough to need anything but home charging.

That adds another advantage (for me) compared to gasoline cars. The number of times needed to refuel. I don't need to stop at the gas station to refill very often, as the regular 'refueling' (or recharging in my case) is simply done at home, during the night.

I think I see what happened here; With "people" I didn't think of individuals adding it as rooftop solar, although that's nice too. I meant people who make financial decisions for power plant buildouts. People who make financial decisions for where their business is going to get power, etc.

I'm mostly thinking of grid scale projects. Which are already happening in both Texas and Arizona in the US from what I gather from articles in The Economist.

I'm also thinking of places like the Atacama desert between Chile and Peru. Various areas of Mexico. South East Asia. The middle east. Northern Africa. Southern Africa (Namibia, South Africa, etc).

The Economist (www.economist.com) convinced me with their June 22nd 2024 issue ( https://www.economist.com/week... ). Specifically, see the article: https://www.economist.com/inte... among others in that issue.

Solar is cheap, abundant, and will come out on top due to economic reasons alone. No subidies required.

Batteries are also needed, of course, but they're also dropping in price as China ramps up production.

The entire thing will be a slam dunk. It'll be entirely obvious 5 years from now, but we're still in the phase where a lot of people haven't caught on and realized that this is the cheapest option.

> Don't pay that bellhop and carry your own bags next time

Ah, so that's the trick. Can I pay them to get'em to stop nagging and stay away from my bags too?

I've *never* enjoyed having others carrying my bags. I'm more than strong enough to carry them myself.

I'm not OP, but I can give you my answer to what you're asking:

A script mainly executes *external commands*.

Most languages can be used to write scripts. They can also be used as a "real" language. Some with more difficulty than others. Bash being an extreme example. You can do a heck of a lot in "pure bash" w/o relying on unix commands. Most people don't bother though. Thus, they write scripts.

When I started using perl some ~27 years ago, a lot of my initial stuff was scripts. I used backticks throughout my code, executing unix commands to get what I needed. Thus, I created perl scripts. More and more, I replaced my `ls` with readdir(), and so forth. They became programs.

Same for python. If you rely on python internals (which most folks do) - it's programs. If you shell out for most of your logic, it's scripts.

At least that's my take.

This used to be true, but is no longer true - and will be even less true year over year.

Battery prices are continuing to decline. China has been manufacturing solar planels like crazy, and are now manufacturing batteries like crazy.

I'd highly recommend that you read the June 22nd 2024 edition of The Economist (https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2024-06-22 ). Their main feature is not their front page, but rather their "Dawn of the Solar Age" feature.

I was extremely surprised. Up until June last year I was "yeah, yeah, Solar is still for specially interested people". Now I'm in the "OK. Solar will happen no matter what, given the economics" camp.

Battery prices are dropping. Residential, municipal and grid-sized battery solutions will be used to store solar for when the sun doesn't shine.

The good thing is that battery prices are dropping, and expected to continue to drop for quite some time.

Not american; don't know the exacting details - but my understanding is that no new projects will be approved on "productive farmland".

Furthermore; given that solar is the cheapest alternative there is per kwh - economic conditions alone will ensure that lots and lots of solar capacity will be added by enterprising individuals, and companies.

The trick is that now that battery prices are plummeting in addition, battery capacity is needed for when the sun doesn't shine, and flywheels are needed for inertia.

Even with that, it's cheaper than any other power plant solutions.

You missed the point. Notre Dame is still in use because they can fix it *with external resources*.

The population of the vessel cannot get *external resources*.

Every thinking person cares.

Wasting the wealth on being nonproductive means we'll become poor again in a generation or two, having wasted our wealth by being prodigal spendthrifts.

That would be sad.