I'm just a dad, standing in front of the world, asking everyone to love heat pumps, eBikes, solar, wind, transmission, dense housing, trains, buses and other things that can help us avoid civilization destroying climate change.
I think about this home from Pacifica CA a lot. Sold for $985k in 2014, then in 2023, after months of price drops, it went for $25k. It's like $960k fell into the sea!!!
The state of CA had tried to do a planned retreat to shield homeowners from such losses, but the voters of Pacifica rejected it.
This solar generation isn't always at the same time as my usage but my grid is still summer peaking so exporting power in the summer and importing it in the winter likely cuts more emissions right now. Hopefully we'll have enough heat pump installs to become winter peaking in the future though.
Looking at an NREL study from March 2024 it seems like barring some amazing discovery that cuts construction costs in half pumped hydro storage simply can't compete with newer cheaper batteries.
www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23ost...
Also "all the rich people live there" wouldn't imply much about the median income. It'd imply that the high end incomes are much higher and LA's top 5% is about 20% higher than Nashville for both mean and percentile so that seems pretty accurate.
I know reporters don't have a lot of time, but it'd be great if they actually read the study results.
Tldr; $9M spent to save $600k, control group C ($50/mo) saved more than test group B ($6.5k initial payment + $500/mo). Would've been better if they'd built cheap/free public housing instead.
We're talking local govs here which cannot simply print money. Choices in how to spend limited local money must be made and this study shows that this is a bad choice because it delivers very little for its huge cost. The study itself notes this in the conclusion yet people ask why it isn't scaled.
That's not what this study says though. It tries to let readers down gently, but "minimal differences" means they can't conclude that the additional $9,950/month did much of anything. That's the main finding here and so many who share this are ignoring it.
The full 1 year report sheds more light. The C group got just $50/month but experienced similar positive outcomes to $1k/month A group. This could mean that the best way to use limited money is to give a much larger group $50/mo, or more likely, that benefits were caused by things other than UBI.
Reading your other skeets on this more and realizing how little time you have I'm thinking that if you have a local Specialized bike shop then the Globe Haul LT is the right choice for you as they'll set it up and fix it. Saw this beaut at swim practice this morning. Pricey, but high quality.
Mine used just 722 kWh last year. Obviously it increased my home heating a bit, but that's still well below that ~5,000 kWh energy star estimated my older water heater to use (though our hot water use is likely well below avg and it was an 80 gal vs 50 for the new heat pump model, but still).
We need a study that is able to quantify emissions reductions from high income/wealth people. This one follows on the Oxfam practice of simply assuming emissions scale with wealth, but a high wealth person could buy solar panels, an EV, heat pumps, etc and eliminate all but embodied emissions.
That's not bad for the specs they list, though it seems like the attachments add a lot. I really like the rickshaw attachment as my kids get bigger. It'd be better for me if it were just a flat bench though so it could fit them and my wife.
That's true for a lot of things, particularly the electric grid, but we're talking about food here and demand does a lot to drive consumption. Beyond burger cookout packs have been close in price per lb to beef burgers, but have not sold nearly as much, same for impossible whoppers. That's demand.
People overestimate emissions from food transport and underestimate the emissions from creating it (Shepherd does that above by only counting methane from cows when their total emissions is about 99 lbs of CO2 Eq per lb of beef). Transport is under 1 lb of this
www.newscientist.com/article/2325...
Tesla is currently worth $558B, a 10% drop after booting Musk seems possible, and honestly I'd expect more cause Tesla's so overvalued right now. Toyota's the 2nd most valuable car company at $282B and GM is 12th at $52B. Tesla probably isn't gonna make 10x more money than GM in the next 10-30 years
CNN writes a whole article on how people are selling more stocks than they're buying. Never once mentions that the US total stock index has been consistently rising and closed at an all time high the same day they published. Seems almost like they're pushing a narrative...
It also notes "Nearly 90% of all firms with revenues greater than $100 million are now private" which relies on people's lack of knowledge about company revenue. The 10th biggest private company has less rev than the 149 biggest public. The top private has less revenue than the 16th highest public.
I agree that it's dangerous to put regular customers on pure wholesale rates, but there's also lots of evidence that TOU rates aren't shifting demand as much as they could/should. PGE charges the same or more for power at noon than at midnight, so customers aren't incentivized to time shift enough.
And the Bolt is discontinued for the moment. The next model will only sell the larger EUV version, the dimensions of which are basically the same as a Mazda5, but it wastes a ton of space on the hood instead of offering a useful 3rd row and rear sliding doors.
www.carsized.com/en/cars/comp...
I use them with the upper mount because that's the right diameter for my bike. Still gives an inch or two of rise. I prefer a rear rack and pannier for heavy loads, but a front rack is nice for quick convenience.
