Discussion

IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

meibo: Maybe "accidentally killing fossil fuels" will be DT's singular good deed

stavros: You can't really attribute to someone something they did unintentionally while trying to do the opposite.

boxed: I mean.. we do all the time no? Hitler tried to make Germany great and made it shit. Mao tried to make China great and killed tens of millions. Stalin, Pol Pot.. the list goes on.If we attribute accidental evil, why should we not attribute accidental good?

stavros: If Hitler was trying to find a gold mine under Germany and instead found a bomb there that killed a bunch of people, we wouldn't blame him for murder, it was an honest mistake.Murdering millions of people wasn't exactly "accidental evil", it was very deliberate. Which parts of what these guys did do you think were accidental?

vidarh: Mao's campaign to kill sparrows was a result of a belief that they were a net loss for harvests.Stalin's support of Lysenko was a result of thinking Lysenko was actually able to drive agricultural growth.Both mistakes led to mass deaths.We still tend to attribute those deaths to those leaders, because their brutally authoritarian rule was what allowed those mistakes to go unchallenged and get fixed before they caused that level of harm.Both of them also killed a lot of people maliciously and intentionally, but a large proportion of their death toll as a side-effect of their oppression, not the goal of it.

stavros: > We still tend to attribute those deaths to those leaders, because their brutally authoritarian rule was what allowed those mistakes to go unchallenged and get fixed before they caused that level of harm.What is the analogue here for attributing the rise of alternative energy sources to Trump? Being too incompetent to avoid harm isn't the same as being too incompetent to avoid benefit, because your job is to create benefit.It's Trump's job to create positive outcomes. If he creates positive outcomes by accident while trying to create negative ones, he should get panned for trying to create negative outcomes.

childintime: > And nuclear is making a comeback: More than 12 GW of new reactors began construction in 2025By the time they are ready they will have contributed so many carbon emissions, that they'll have to run for 25% of their expected life span to get them back. But by the time they are commissioned (~2036), solar + battery + solar-made hydrocarbons will have made them uneconomic, and solar would have made far fewer emissions.Furthermore, they are big up front money sinks, creating a sunk investment, diminishing the gamma of future options one might have wished to invest in, or take advantage of, something nobody talks about. Investing in nuclear is like willingly tying a brick to your foot, severely limiting your investment options.They are perfect for government vanity projects, though, where a lot of money can be siphoned off to personal crypto gardens, repeatedly. Money laundering is likely the leitmotiv behind why you see them being built.

fxwin: i think that's why they used the word "accidentally"

stavros: Let me rephrase: You can't really attribute to someone something they did accidentally while trying to do the opposite.