No answer just curious as well, I’d love a good text to speech function. There are so many books I want to “read” but don’t have audiobooks for them, I have a hard time focusing on text for very long, so it hard to get through longer things.

Gas turbines base load still take time to spin up and have lengthy shut down and start up procedures, even if they can be shut down. They are faster than a steam plant, but are not designed shut down and start up repeatedly over the course of a day.

The real question is why we are building any fossil fuel plants at all, and the answer is simple, they have immense lobbying power and vast full spectrum media campaigns that they use to prevent entirely viable existing alternatives from being built.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-04/documents/us-ghg-inventory-2021-chapter-executive-summary.pdf

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ace3db

The release of methane from coal production, storage and transit accounts for less than 8% of total methane emissions in the US. 24% comes from natural gas production, storage and transit. The tanks and pipe lines are far from “air tight”, even if they meet industry defined standards for the term. Source for EPA numbers on emissions if you are curious

The idea of gas power plants as a supplementary system to pick up the slack is a sham, the vast majority of gas generator capacity being built does not shut down when non-emitting systems can meet demand. Especially in the context of replacing coal plants with gas plants. These are base load plants, not peaker plants.

Every time we build a new base load gas plant to replace a coal plant, we’re locking our selves into burning and leaking methane for another 30 years. Something we can not afford to be doing given that we can not wait 30 years to reach net zero emissions, even 20 years is a catastrophe.

It’s bad faith to try and move the goal post and act like this conversation was about anything but heating effect and climate change.

It is a fact that natural gas (read methane) infrastructure and power generation has a greater heating impact than coal.

Edit: want to be very clear here, I’m not sayin coal is clean. I’m not saying it is good to live next to a coal plant. I’m not saying build more coal plants.

I’m saying, don’t replace coal with natural gas. Put in solar, nuclear, wind, geothermal, hydro electric, ANYTHING but natural gas. If none of that is possible, then leave the damn coal plant until it is possible. Locking our selves in to 20~30 years of gas is basically guaranteeing a catastrophic climate disaster.

Natural gas is 95% methane. Coal is a fraction of a fraction of a percent methane. When coal leaks, it ends up as a bunch of rocks on the side of a rail track. When natural gas infrastructure leaks, it dumps Megatons of methane into the atmosphere. The research and reporting on this topic are clear, natural gas has a significantly higher heating impact than coal, with no doubt.

Natural gas as a “bridge fuel” was just as much a lie as “clean coal”, a PR campaign to support lobbyists in their efforts to prevent regulation.

Natural gas can never be clean ether, and the cost of sealing up the supply chain is more expensive than just drilling more, some states have tried to put in laws to set a minimum leak rate and natural gas companies lobbied to prevent the bills from passing. Far from the first example of natural gas companies lobbying against laws that would cut in to their profits.

Natural gas as a bridge fuel was a distraction to divert the public away from actual solutions. It’s worse for climate change than coal is and plenty of in-depth reports, papers, and research bear this out.

Honestly, better than gas. Like, yah, natural gas has lower co2 per unit of power at the power plant, but there’s methane leaking all along the supply chain, a green house gas 40 times more potent than Co2.

between 5-10% of the methane that comes out of a well ends up leaking somewhere along the line. To make the heating effect even break even with coal the leak rate would have to be closer to 1%.

Not advocating to keep burning coal, just saying that what we’ve been replacing it with is worse. I’d rather we keep a coal plant open and wait for an opportunity to replace with with a non-carbon emitting power source than build a shiny new gas plant that’s going to be kept around for at least 20 years.

Eh, maybe not ban, but like, remind them that this a community space, and that they should moderate and remove commenters/posters who are being actively toxic or harassing people for disagreeing.

Like, I’m not fan of Biden or the neoliberal order, but what is going on there isn’t doing anything constructive. Even if they don’t intend it, the way that space is moderated, it’s a potential harbor for bad faith trolls.

It is all spite, no solutions or discussions of means of action. Just “we sure do hate this particular side of the two ruling parties.”

Deranged logic, Israel is not a strategic keystone to the survival of America.

Like, even if one has drunk the Flavoraid enough to think that what Israel is doing is ok and that it’s not an apartheid state that needs the South Africa treatment; in what fucking reality is Israel not eminently replaceable in the role it plays in US foreign policy? if anything, it is a net negative, a dead weight dragging down US relations with the rest of the region.

It routinely takes unilateral action to throw gas on the metaphorical fires of the region. Like, allies have their own goals and ambitions that diverge sometimes, but you’d expect them to converge occasionally and not actively attempt kneecap each others diplomacy.

Others have pointed out there a private company, but to be more specific on what that means, they are not openly trading their shares. The majority of shares are all owned by a handful of people who care about the long term health of the business. A lot of companies that we see doing major face plants right now are publicly traded, so any big fund or individual with enough cash can swoop in and buy up enough shares to control leadership, then use that control to get the company to do stupid stuff generally or maximize short term profitability at the expense of long term health.

A similar thing can happen if someone with a majority of shares choose to sell too a ghoul.

“ Star Wars is bad now”

I mean yah, the vertical integration, means tested everything, nostalgia bating and assembly line techniques that Disney does sure do ruin otherwise fine properties.

“No, I don’t mind that, that’s just good business. I just hate the gay people who kissed in the background”

Oh, OH ok, you’re just an idiot…