just saw the percentage of steam-powered and electric cars...
(#37 @ https://www.boredpanda.com/weird-history-twitter/?utm_source=duckduckgo&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=organic)
...that were being driven by the populace. impressive.

know electric trollies were also a thing, but they were sabotaged by gasoline concerns (killed) because read the history of the one that use to run in our small mid-western town.

anyway...electric vehicles were viable then and if other concerns (like GMC) were kept at bay...100 years later we just might be driving all-electric vehicles (maybe flying them - we were supposed to have those by now).

necessity being the mother of invention, it only makes sense to keep the future (electric cars, solar-power, etc) alive. if the nation doesn't, china (or other visionaries) may capture the solar-driven land speeder market.

[trump is guilty btw. but GOP is GMC in that scenario. will be seen as a big mistake too. maybe 'big carrot' has something to do with it. he is orange.]

IMO, As someone who is successful at life with little to no effort, I'll say luck plays a HUGE part in my success, way more than working hard if that's even a factor.

I own my nice home and 3/4 acre yard outright, and 4 cars, a racecar, a pond I can swim in, solar power, orchard, etc.
Most of the money that bought these things came from the luck of being born into a fairly wealthy family and outliving a few. I broke my back at 31 and essentially retired.
I feel like I'm more successful than most Americans financially and elsewise, with zero debt, multiple assets, a long and stable marriage, etc....and I feel I've put less effort into achieving these things than most people. The only logical explanation I can come up with is luck, including the luck of my birth with decent genes and money for nothing.

or... put a 4-way stop, where the main road (and cyclists in danger) would have to stop as well.

Or create a new sign "Cyclists, look left for arseholes"

Even if you don't put a 4-way stop, could certainly have a solar-powered (battery at night) LED "flasher" on the stop signs that would blink when detects movement on main road. A raspberry-pi has enough cpu power. Might cost $20k to install a pole to mount 2 cameras and solar panel(s). This "blinking stop sign" would be so rare, that it would catch drivers attention and they'll be more likely to stop.
(I'm not suggesting raspberry pi are reliable enough for this application, but my point is the computer vision can be done in < 10W, which can easily be handled by a solar panel, even in England)

Solar powered traffic cams with, you know, internets and stuff?
Or kickstarter the 100k and stagger the junction right now.

This still does not wish away the problem of having to cover all wind and solar power sources with backups for windless nights.

North Africa is still the same time-zone. Consider connecting Australia.

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Hardly a brilliant analysis - more like a brilliant piece of advocacy that, like most of its kind, is long on optimistic projections and very short on real numbers and a real analysis of those numbers. For instance: what is the megawatt hour cost of a solar power generation station that can replicate the power responsiveness and availability factor of a fossil power generation station (over a similar life cycle). He quotes the kwh cost for solar and wind power systems but each and every one of them is "backed up" by a much larger conventional power generation system that, ultimately, is burdened with the costs of maintaining grid stability, grid voltage, and grid frequency. There are huge engineering problems and substantial costs associated with maintaining a power supply that we now require to operate a modern economy. Just ONCE, I would like to see the green power advocates address those challenges and costs in a realistic way instead of glossing over them with their fantasy projections.
And I will say, as an aside, that I have spent my entire working career working in the renewable energy sector and fully agree that we need to transition to a renewable energy economy - but unrealistic projections are going to doom our economy if they are taken as being possible in the near term.

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Few points...

We have no options for serious load shifting to utilise all that solar power in the evenings when it would make a difference. And power companies refuse to trust it for baseload power, so they still generate what they estimate they need for base load,and pay for rapid generation to handle spikes. Most electricity generated from home solar in Aus is wasted.

Without battery backups, the best production of the day goes to the energy company for 8 cents, and we buy back power from them (generated by coal of course) at night for 36 cents. Our energy companies aren't going to pay a premium for power they really don't give a crap about.

Most panels in Aus face north/east, to generate the largest amount of energy. When most people aren't home to use it. Instead, panels should face north/west to generate the most power in the afternoon when we come home from work/fire up air conditioners/start cooking etc. And even then, the power than is generated is but a fraction of what is consumed during peak periods due to the setting sun.

Annnnd most people in Australia do not even check their systems to see if they're still doing anything... It's estimated 14% of all home solar systems are currently non-functional due to faulty panels, inverter or both.

Until the point in time comes when energy companies can create a way to load shift solar production to ensure continuity of power, or household power storage units pricing comes down enough to be viable, non industrial solar in Australia is mostly feel good propaganda.

And while a number of coal plants have closed recently, it's not due to lack of demand as solar take up reduces requirement for coal fired power... It's because the plants are not viable any more to run and owners do not want to run at a loss. Each one that closes represents a significant portion of our overall generation being lost, with no core plan for continuity (wind and solar are not being considered as a core strategy currently).

I'm all for saving the planet, but the science/facts on solar outweigh the feel goods. Perhaps instead of patting ourselves on the back, we should be thinking about a better plan.

"Even with an anti-renewable government".

That's not really true. At both a Federal level (since 2005 under the Liberals) and state level, the government has offered large rebates/subsidies/feed-in tariffs to the public to encourage the uptake of solar power.

I believe some of these benefits are available to private businesses as well.

Pretty dope looking solar roofs. Thie videos shows some cool ass different style solar roofs. https://laughingsquid.com/tesla-announces-solar-roof-tiles-and-powerwall-2-to-make-home-solar-power-more-affordable/

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In other good news, bicycling, wind power, and solar power continue to go up in the US and worldwide, while birth rates continue to go down.

Chernobyl was a big cock-up allright, as was Fukushima, although that seems to have been less severe.

What would you say is the most dangerous form of energy production we have now? What about the safest? Look up "Deaths by terawatt hour", you might be surprised.

Even wind power has killed about 3 times as many people per TWH produced as nuclear, AFAIK mainly due to the amounts of steel and concrete used in constructing the plants, the production of which is relatively dangerous. Coal is on a different planet altogether, killing about 1500 times as many people per TWH as nuclear.

Even if you assume the total deaths from nuclear power production are underreported and underestimated by a factor of 10, that would still only put it on par with solar power in terms of people killed to produce energy.

Now, nuclear isn't a cureall solution to our energy problems. Even if we wanted to, we simply couldn't build enough power plants to cover all our energy needs with nuclear, you've got the storage issue, you've got the issue of plant placement, and in general relying on one technology alone is a bad idea.

Still. Coal. 1500 times as deadly. How many articles and videos have you seen on how scary coal is? What gives?