You distribute pv and wind over large areas and they get destroyed by weather, get dirty, require significant maintenance. If individuals want to have wind turbines or pv installations that's great - but these things are a giant mess at grid scale - absolutely awful.
We get anything from storms to hail few times a year here. My patio roof got holes in it from the ice balls, but the panels are fine. Are you missing some qualifiers on that one?
> get dirty
You clean them every few months or monitor for issues per group of panels.
> require significant maintenance
Just like every other device out in the real world. Coal, gas, wind, solar, nuclear, thermal generators require maintenance.
What I think the GP is blowing completely out of proportion is:
> they get destroyed by weather
A few of them, every year. It makes a visible dent on their average longevity.
But I don't think distributing them has any impact on this. They just create a risk situation that nobody seems to be insuring and that large farms will self insure without problems. (Anyway, with the price going down the way it is, that will soon become irrelevant.)
> get dirty
Each person stopping to clean their own panels is much less efficient than professional cleaning centralized panels. It does increase your electricity costs.
> require significant maintenance
Home maintenance is an entire other level of inefficiency. That extends to any kind of equipment in your home.
But again, none of those is a big deal. Solar is mostly operation-free, so distribution mostly doesn't matter.
We were originally discussing offshore wind. These things have to function in some of the harshest conditions imaginable. We don't really fully understand how weather patterns will change over time with climate change. The idea that these factors won't represent serious risks to output over 50-year lifespans is delusional. We should be building modern nuclear reactors. Small scale distributed solar in sunny environments is fine - the rest of this stuff is just a massive waste.
That's not a significant issue. O&M costs are a given and not wildly out of step with traditional generation. If you want to talk about cost effectivness the thing that matters is either a)transmission capacity and interconnects for distributed generation b)storage for centralized generation. As long as you're ok investing in 1 of the 2, distributed generation is great.
Yeah of course distributed infrastructure is ... Bad???
Oh no we have no single point of failure, empower people to invest into the grid and have huge redundancies in the grid...
Batteries literally solve most of the problems
Nickel-Iron batteries are very good for this purpose: practically unlimited charge-discharge cycles and overcharging/overdischarging won't damage them. They should be dirt-cheap too, but almost there are very few manufacturers so there's not much competition.
Capacity factor is calculated into lcoe, what's your point? Moreover, downtime for wind turbines is much less of an issue for a grid than large power plants (even with a significantly higher capacity factor), because you run into much bigger issues if your GW plant is down, compared to a couple of MW (and no the probabilities of all your renewables mix going down at the same time is very low, unless you're Luxemburg).
Capacity factor is calculated in. But intermittency is not. The issue is that once demand is saturated during periods of peak production, the excess energy is wasted so the effective capacity factor drops as adoption grows. E.g. once you saturate daytime energy demand, further investment in solar energy yields no more useable energy.
Intermittent sources are a good way to supplement dispatchable sources of energy like gas plants or hydroelectricity. But as a primary source of energy, they're not feasible without a massive breakthrough in energy storage.
The effect of overcapacity is null or negative price, which has the property to make more storage viable (who cares if it only gives back 25% if the input is free or very cheap), so I'd say intermittent sources overcapacity is an enabler of on grid storage.
E.g. today in Germany you can buy MWh at 14€ at 13:00 and sell it back at 180€ at 18:00. I didn't look all of Europe but it looked like the biggest spread today... You can make money with crappy storage under those conditions...
This is precisely why intermittent sources aren't viable without a breakthrough in energy storage. Existing storage mechanisms aren't capable of delivering at the tens to hundreds of terawatt hour scale required to make intermittent sources viable.
Remember, 66.8 TWh of electricity is used daily. Intermittent sources don't just experience daily fluctuations, but seasonal fluctuations lasting days or weeks. Even 12 hours of storage would still leave us with periods of insufficient production multiple orders of magnitude more frequent than the status quo: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
> Capacity factor is calculated in. But intermittency is not. The issue is that once demand is saturated during periods of peak production, the excess energy is wasted so the effective capacity factor drops as adoption grows. E.g. once you saturate daytime energy demand, further investment in solar energy yields no more useable energy.
>
> Intermittent sources are a good way to supplement dispatchable sources of energy like gas plants or hydroelectricity. But as a primary source of energy, they're not feasible without a massive breakthrough in energy storage.
Intermittent sources are baseload, your argument applies to any baseload system, I.e. you always need some additional dispatchable energy source (unless you over build by large amounts). Again if your main energy would be e.g. nuclear you need even higher amount of dispatchable power because if your nuclear plant goes down (planned or unplanned) you need to compensate for a lot of power.
This statement is about as incorrect as it is possible to be, as even a cursory attempt to check this before posting would show.
It is difficult to understand why anyone makes claims such as this, unless they are consciously or unconsciously attempting to redefine a word that already has a well-understood meaning.
"Base load" refers to electricity demand, not sources of electricity. Things that consume electricity are a "load". The "base load" is the level of energy demand that is always present in the grid. E.g. if a grid consumes 5 GW of electricity at peak demand, and 4 GW at minimum demand, then 4 GW is the base load.
For residential uses, heating, cooling, and refrigeration are the main uses.
For commercial electricity use: computing, refrigeration, cooling, and ventilation.
For industrial electricity use: machine drive (lathes, mills, etc.), process and boiler heating, facility heating and cooling, electrochemical process.
The only categories that I guess could be easily shifted is process and boiler heating. But some industrial processes need to run uninterrupted for weeks. Machine drive, perhaps, but then workers would not be able to work a regular schedule. Not to mention, industrial applications in total is less than 25% of electricity use.
Demand shifting is a lot easier said than done. I see it proposed very frequently, but I've yet to see a detailed plan for what electricity uses will be shifted, and how.
> For residential uses, heating, cooling, and refrigeration are the main uses.
Heating and cooling can be offloaded into grid peak availability hours relatively easily with the price serving as a reliable trigger. This assumes proper insulation for the most part, but is viable and using the price as an indicator automatically sets up the right incentives. As for refrigeration, the energy use for that in a private household seems to be overstated.
> For commercial electricity use: computing, refrigeration, cooling, and ventilation
For cooling the same applies as for private households, maybe to a lesser extent. The other loads remain pretty static in their demand, but once a commercial operation has a certain scale building out the own battery storage to optimize for purchasing price (assuming a flexible price that reflects spot pricing) may be a viable strategy.
> For industrial electricity use: machine drive (lathes, mills, etc.), process and boiler heating, facility heating and cooling, electrochemical process.
For boiler heating and facility heating and cooling the same applies as for commercial and residential uses. For other energy intense workloads, demand shift is already frequently happening because the ROI is fairly quick. It’s not easy to assess from the outside because you do need an in depth process understanding that you just cannot provide as an outsider. But I have personally witnessed plenty of examples that demonstrate it is well within the realm of possibility
Heating and cooling cannot be easily load shifted. Daily fluctuations in energy production aren't the only forms of fluctuations. Seasonal fluctuations are large, too. And the seasonal variation has the unfortunate tendency to line up with periods of high energy demand. "Just don't heat your house in the winter" is not a viable form of demand shifting.
> For boiler heating and facility heating and cooling the same applies as for commercial and residential uses.
Note that this refers to "process and boiler heating". There's plenty of industrial processes that need to be kept at temperature for long periods of time, otherwise the batch is ruined. Titanium smelting is one example. I've yet to see a breakdown of what specific industrial processes can be shifted.
Heating and cooling can only be offloaded in extremely wellinsulated houses. A lot of the ones in the UK do not make the cut. Even some new EU ones do not.
If you try to offload it otherwise you just waste power heating/cooling yourself at wrong hours.
A boiler in this setup is a thermal battery. These are good, but space consuming and relatively failure prone and expensive to maintain.
Inefficient compared to central too.
Nuclear power is indeed a silver bullet. France supplied > 85% of its electricity demand with nuclear (with the rest being filled by pre-existing hydroelectricity). As is hydroelectricity and geothermal power for those countries with the appropriate geography. E.g. Norward produces 100% of electricity through hydro. Non-intermittent sources of energy don't need to be supplemented by alternative sources of energy.
They could always build more nuclear plants to fill additional demand. Again, non intermittent sources don't need supplemental sources of energy, as long as there's sufficient supply. By comparison, a country cannot possibly run their grid entirely with solar on account of intermittency.
I'd suggest reading people's comments in greater detail, before accusing people of lying.
So now you suggest that we should build peaking nuclear plants in an attempt at covering your previous blunder with pure insanity.
Lazard expects peakers to run at 10-15% capacity factor because you know, how often do we have cold spells in France or whatever other reason causes them to run? A couple of weeks a year at most. Lets say 15%.
Lets calculate what Hinkley Point C costs when running as a peaker. It has a CFD at $170/MWh for 30 years. Lets assume it runs at a 85% capacity factor and that $20/MWh are O&M costs.
153/0.15 + 20 = $1040/MWh
You want to solve the problem by forcing electricity costs on the consumers at double of the peak of the energy crisis.
All because you view the world in nuclear fanclub fantasy land glasses.
If you've already provisioned enough nuclear plants to meet peak energy demand, producing less energy has no marginal cost. Alternatively, you can just keep operating at full capacity, and give energy away for free and use it for energy-intensive tasks like desalination or arc furnaces. The idea that we'd build nuclear plants that only operate a few weeks per year is a strawman of your own construction.
You're right that nuclear is more expensive than continuing to burn fossil fuels. And the reality is nobody has a plan to build fossil fuel free grid based on wind and solar. Absent a miraculous breakthrough in energy storage, solar and wind will always have to be deployed in tandem with fossil fuels. If we're looking at actually eliminating carbon emissions, nuclear is the only viable option besides geographically limited sources like hydropower.
> They could always build more nuclear plants to fill additional demand.
And then
> If you've already provisioned enough nuclear plants to meet peak energy demand, producing less energy has no marginal cost.
If the magic tooth fairy comes with free nuclear plants... Nuclear cult member fantasy land.
So at what capacity factor will the entire fleet run at when built out to manage both outages and cold spells requiring 30 GW of fossil fuels to handle?
France currently run their fleet of 63 GW at a ~70% capacity factor. Add another 30 GW (lets call it 100% reliable when a cold spell hits) and the capacity factors vastly lower due to extremely low utilization factors of the last 30 GW.
You can spread out the lower of capacity factors across the entire fleet or just let the peakers bear them.
But in the end the results are the same because you still need to finance the your fleet now delivering a measly 45% capacity factor.
Lets translate a 45% capacity factor to Hinkley Point C numbers:
Now you are forcing the consumers to pay $355/MWh or 35.5 cents per kWh for all electricity delivered the whole year.
All you have done is take the ~$1000/MWh cost from 15% of the time and spread it out over the whole year.
Do you see the pure insanity of what you keep proposing now?
For the third time, I never said nuclear was cheaper than contuing to burn natural gas. It has the distinction of being the only non-intermittent source of carbon-free electricity besides geographically contrained sources like hydroelectricity and geothermal power. It is the only viable path to decarbonization for most countries.
What's the alternative to nuclear power for reaching a carbon-free grid? No doubt, your plan will assume a breakthrough in energy storage that delivers orders-of-magnitude more scale than existing solutions.
Why do you keep trying to alter what you said? Can't you stick to the truth?
> It is the only viable path to decarbonization for most countries.
The research disagrees with you.
See the recent study on Denmark which found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load.
> Focusing on the case of Denmark, this article investigates a future fully sector-coupled energy system in a carbon-neutral society and compares the operation and costs of renewables and nuclear-based energy systems.
> The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources.
> However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour.
> For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power.
Or the same for Australia if you went a more sunny locale finding that renewables ends up with a grid costing less than half of "best case nth of a kind nuclear power":
You are being purposefully aggravating here because your argument is weak but it's been socially supported for some time now. Nuclear power lagged behind renewables due primarily to proliferation fears and subsequent over-regulation in most of the world, not technical flaws, missing out on innovations like modular reactors. China’s pushing ahead with 150 GW by 2030, leveraging nuclear’s advantages: it’s compact (1-4 sq mi/GW vs. solar’s 10-20), reliable, and resilient to extreme (and simply changing) weather, without reliance on rare earths or massive storage (with their own host externalizations and supply risks). Costs can drop to $50-100/MWh with new tech and long lifespans, rivaling renewables when accounting for their hidden expenses (storage, grid upgrades). Proliferation risks exist but can be managed with oversight. Nuclear remains the best bet for scalable, clean energy.
Nuclear power has famously had negative learning by doing throughout its entire life.
There was a first large scale attempt at scaling nuclear power culminating 40 years ago. Nuclear power peaked at ~20% of the global electricity mix in the 1990s. It was all negative learning by doing.
Then we tried again 20 years ago. There was a massive subsidy push. The end result was Virgil C. Summer, Vogtle, Olkiluoto and Flamanville. We needed the known quantity of nuclear power since no one believed renewables would cut it.
How many trillions in subsidies should we spend to try one more time? All the while the competition in renewables are already delivering beyond our wildest imaginations.
China is barely investing in nuclear power. At their current buildout which have been averaging 5 construction starts per year since 2020 they will at saturation reach 2-3% total nuclear power in their electricity mix.
China is all in on renewables [1]() and [2] storage.
Then rounding of with some typical ”SMRs” nonsense!!!
SMRs have been complete vaporware for the past 70 years.
It's too costly to build high speed rail in many parts of the world (California for instance). It's not because high speed rail isn't a viable solution, it's regulation.
The article you posted from sciencedirect supports this. The study points primarily to a changing complex regulation landscape as a primary driver of costs. Meanwhile, France is in an excellent position in the EU in terms of energy in large part because it stuck with nuclear instead of attempting unsuccessfully to transfer to wind and solar like some of it's neighbors (who now burn lignite to meet energy demands).
Solar panels, for instance, are mostly made in places where actual costs of construction are externalized to the environment and workers with depressed wages. Nuclear plants need to be built and decommissioned in the same place - places that are often actively hostile with complex regulation meant to curtail nuclear specifically for the sake of non-proliferation. SMRs help sidestep a portion of this hostile regulation but there are countless reactor designs that are possible that we can't even begin to explore until regulation is made reasonable.
Your figures for China's mix are meaningless because you don't bother to mention when you think "saturation" occurs. They are on track to build far more Nuclear than 2-3% of their current mix in the next 20 years - and this is as the world's top manufacturer of solar and wind products.
Again, why are you talking about cost, when the real question is viability? How does the study you linked plan to accommodate intermittency? The answer is just a vague statement about storage mechanisms:
> Storage of energy is an important element of 100% RE systems, especially when using large shares of variable sources
like solar and wind [14], [40]–[42], and it can take various forms [43]–[45]. Batteries can supply efficient short term storage, while e-fuels can provide long-term storage solutions. Other examples are mechanical storage in pumped hydro energy storage [46], [47] and compressed air energy storage [48], [49], and thermal energy in a range of storage media at various temperature levels [43], [50].
Nowhere do they actually outline how much storage of each system they will provision. How many TWh of batteries? How many TWh of pumped hydro? Totally unanswered. They just mention the existence of storage, and avoid any tangible discussion of scale. Like I said, there's no realistic plans for a grid primarily powered by intermittent sources. The storage required for such a grid is orders of magnitude larger than what can be feasibly provisioned.
This isn't a tiny insignificant detail. It's is a foundational part of a primarily renewable grid. And nobody has a plan to solve it that doesn't amount to "assume some different system, which has never been deployed at scale, can tens of terawatt hours of storage".
Love that you try to avoid the issue of cost. Yeah, in the land of infinite money and resources you can do anything.
In the real world the energy crisis was a cost crisis. But you seem to no care the slightest about massively increasing the ratepayers bills and by that creating a new self made energy crisis. This time fueled by nuclear subsidies.
So you skipped the first two studies. I suppose because you found nothing to complain about in them. Good to know.
Then you go on a meta-analysis on the entire field and demand them to produce a TWH figure for some energy system you can't even specify.
You truly are grasping for the straws.
Here's the quote you missed:
> Much of the resistance towards 100% RE systems in the literature seems to come from the a-priori assumption that an energy system based on solar and wind is impossible since these energy sources are variable. Critics of 100% RE systems like to contrast solar and wind with ’firm’ energy sources like nuclear and fossil fuels (often combined with CCS) that bring their own storage. This is the key point made in some already mentioned reactions, such as those by Clack et al. [225], Trainer [226], Heard et al. [227] Jenkins et al. [228], and Caldeira et al. [275], [276]. However, while it is true that keeping a system with variable sources stable is more complex, a range of strategies can be employed that are often ignored or underutilized in critical studies: oversizing solar and wind capacities; strengthening interconnections [68], [82], [132], [143], [277], [278]; demand response [279], [172], e.g. smart electric vehicles charging using delayed charging or delivering energy back to the electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid [181], [280]– [282]; storage [40]– [43], [46], [83], [140], [142], such as stationary batteries; sector coupling [16], [39], [90]– [92], [97], [132], [216], e.g. optimizing the interaction between electricity, heat, transport, and industry; power-to-X [39], [106], [134], [176], e.g. producing hydrogen at moments when there is abundant energy; et cetera. Using all these strategies effectively to mitigate variability is where much of the cutting-edge development of 100% RE scenarios takes place.
> With every iteration in the research and with every technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive. Variability, especially short term, has many mitigation options, and energy system studies are increasingly capturing these in their 100% RE scenarios.
With the conclusion based on the meta-analysis:
> The main conclusion of the vast majority of 100% renewable energy systems studies is that such systems can power all energy in all regions of the world at low cost. As such, we do not need to rely on fossil fuels in the future. In the early 2020s, the consensus has increasingly become that solar PV and wind power will dominate the future energy system and new research increasingly shows that 100% renewable energy systems are not only feasible but also cost effective. This gives us the key to a sustainable civilization and the long-lasting prosperity of humankind.
Since the study was released in mid 2022 has it become easier to harder to create 100% renewable energy systems? Easier.
The cost of nuclear is primarily from regulation/human decision making that prevents it from externalizing its costs onto the environment (decom costs, waste handling) not physics. Wind and solar are limited severely by physics and they are much more vulnerable to a changing climate. China eating its own dogfood with heavy investments in renewables is meaningful but only illuminates some of what is happening. A significant amount of this stuff is going into the ground in 25 years and it won't be handled with nearly the safety and care as waste streams from nuclear power.
Nowhere in that quote does it list how much of each type of storage is required. Again, they just list a range of storage systems, most of them never deployed at scale, and just don't even bother to lay out a concrete plan. The quotes you're posting are fitting this pattern of vague statements about storage and a total absence of concrete plans.
How many TWh of batteries? How many TWh of pumped hydro? How many TWh of some more exotic storage systems like compressed air or hydrogen? There's a reason why plans for a renewable grid don't go into this detail and stick to vague statement: actually sketching out how much storage would be required would show just how infeasible it really is.
Like I said, proponents of a mostly renewable grid don't have a plan to address intermittency. Or rather their plan is, "assume something solves storage, and don't worry about it".
Labour have pledged to bring it back down to 2030, but when they begin the talks with the motor industry to try to achieve this they will fold like they have done several times so far in this government.
I don't think this is exhaustive and things have expanded since this was published, but this[1] somewhat covers this
> CDC webpages currently note that the "CDC's website is being modified to comply with President Trump's Executive Orders." Specifically, the CDC has been purging its website of topics related to diversity, gender identity, and LGBTQ issues. In addition, CDC researchers have been ordered to retract papers submitted to journals that use words or phrases like non-binary, transgender, LGBT, pregnant people, and more.
Ive heard HIV and contraception related information was also removed [2].
> Among the many pages that remain down are Health Disparities Among LQBTQ Youth, Interim Clinical Considerations for Use of Vaccine for Mpox Prevention, and Fast Facts: HIV and Transgender People.
Other government sites [3] had similar purges for different topics:
> The Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York alleges the agency illegally scrapped essential webpages without public notice last month, after USDA Director of Digital Communications Peter Rhee ordered staff to archive or publish “any landing pages focused on climate change.”
Let's find out if you're a bigot or not. I'll throw up Webster's definition for reference.
Bigot – a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.
The capacity for pregnancy is not confined to individuals with a female (46,XX) chromosomal pattern. The real world is complicated, and intersex people can be born with a (46,XY) karyotype or mixed (46,XX) and (46,XY) karyotypes as a result of chimerism. People with Swyer syndrome (46,XY) develop female reproductive anatomy (a uterus and fallopian tubes) but do not produce eggs. However, pregnancy can be achieved with donor eggs and assisted reproductive technology.
So here's the question: Are you devoted to your first opinion, or are you capable of acknowledging that the medical community may have had legitimate reasons, grounded in actual biology, to choose a more inclusive word?
What of the people that are born who don't produce gametes?
( For example, no gametes are produced in 85% of individuals with streak gonads )
The whole human sex | gender thing seems superficially clearcut but the real world edge cases are messy AF.
The aspect I personally find confusing is that the exceptions are relatively rare .. human births are straighforward enough for 98% of births, and of the 2% that pose a challenge the really curvy edge cases are rare (but real).
Why then do some people seeming lose their collective minds over real but rare occurrences and attempt to hammer every triangle into either a round or a square hole?
I have a purely empirical observational view of the world at large, forced a priori prescriptiveness at odds with the world seems more than a little flat earthy.
A less succinct way of phrasing it would be something like: which gametes are produced, were produced, or should have been produced.
There are messy edge cases. Not all people have 8 fingers and two thumbs, but we don't say digit count is on a spectrum because some people are born with more or less, or that some people have had digits amputated.
The vast, vast majority of people are not messy edge cases. And some of them find language like "pregnant people" or "people with protates" awkward and vaguely dehumanising as opposed to the more understandable and specific terms: "women" and "men".
Like you, I find those terms awkward, at best. I refuse to use them.
Yet, "what should have been produced" is no better. Everytime I hear it, from you and anyone else, it sounds like numbskulls all too pleased at themselves for what they believe is a clever definition, without realizing it's merely "because I said so".
Maybe I'm missing something, and one day I will hear it differently. Not many such things change for me after years. Maybe I'll win the lottery, too.
Since you mentioned fingers... I used to know a shop teacher who adamantly wouldn't count themselves among the 10-fingered, and would give you a safety lecture if you brought it up. Just like that lecture would ignore your joke about opening soda cans and proceed into a near-diatribe that, 30 years later, is still an effective reminder on machine safety, this exemplifies the crux of the gender terminology problem: you're focusing on the wrong thing.
Why are you so insistent on telling other people about their bodies, to the point of declaring to them what their body "should have produced"?
You appear as the middle-schooler that thought youself clever, and your close group of friends seemed to agree, but most everyone else is trying to ignore you. This only became a problem when that close group of friends started stealing lunch money, saying it "should have" been given to them.
> A less succinct way of phrasing it would be something like: which gametes are produced, were produced, or should have been produced.
So how can we determine what "should" be from a scientific basis if all study of these outliers is policed and censored like this?
This seems to be missing the point that would and should are objective vs whatever YOU and yours decided... Almost universally decided by religious or cultural dogma ... And not biology or science
We've been able to observe that there are two sexes since time immemorial based on secondary sex characteristics. There is a very strong correlation between these characteristics and gametes produced. This isn't what I or anyone else has decided nor is it based on religion or culture.
Why is a strong correlation need to forced into a false binary true or false by the law or government?? Myself and others have already gone over the outliers... Again you are focusing on "should be" vs what objectively and scientifically just IS. which is the very definition of culture vs science.
It's not a forced binary. There are no in-between gametes. There are large gametes (eggs) and small gametes (sperm).
The law and government doesn't get to decide this, as you say, it just is. How the law reacts to the scientific fact of the sex binary is a different matter.
There is plenty of in between on what to classify someone who doesn't produce either gamete. And the only answer you seem to have it's that it's obvious because 'should'. While also thinking it's acceptable to use the law to force this conclusion against scientific research. Much like a religious dogma...
Anyways I'm done with this conversation, the whole point was to tease out how absurd and non objective your argument was and I think I have achieved that well enough for others to read for themselves whether this circular logic makes sense or is just to rationalize bigotry.
The problem here is that you’re hand-waving people’s identity behind what you believe it “should” be - which isn’t actually easy to tell! You can have ovaries, XY chromosomes, eggs, male characteristics, and on and on and on in infinite permutations.
Of course, they (meaning people who identify different than you think they “should”) also hand-wave everything away. The difference is they are… them. Their opinion on their identity is more important.
Some people being born with additional/missing digits or limbs doesn't mean we should stop saying that humans have two arms and two legs with five fingers/toes each. At the end this is all performative - no one was ever actually harmed by women being called women.
And if anything those who insist of forcing this newspeak onto others by attacking anyone that doesn't go along also fit your definition of being "obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices".
> doesn't mean we should stop saying that humans have two arms and two legs with five fingers/toes each.
In the context of a loose generalisation that's pefectly fine.
However in the context of delivering public services to insist that all humans have two arms and two legs with five fingers/toes each with no exceptions is just wrong.
According to you. Not according to the trans-men who have undergone c-sections. Whether that is happening or not is not debatable - there are people who identify as trans-men who have gotten c-sections. Just as the sky is blue.
The question then shifts to why you believe your interpretation of their identity is more valuable than their interpretation of their identity. This is where people really struggle to make their logic consistent. In my opinion, your interpretation is inherently less valuable because, well, you aren't them.
One may wish to look to some one true objective truth. It does not exist. Women and men is not clear-cut and has never been clear-cut. There are those who may have a uterus, ovaries, and XY chromosomes. Or testes and a vagina, with XX ovaries. Or maybe ovaries with XXY chromosomes.
We can hand-wave these people away, sure, but remember - you're competing with a perfectly inclusive term. If you hand-wave those people away then you admit your term isn't perfectly inclusive and is therefore worse, so we're back at square one.
Can you find one true external factor that determines a binary gender for every human who has existed, may exist, or is currently existing, with no exceptions? You may be tempted to answer - but I should warn you, it can, and will, be trivially disputed.
Or, you can skip all of this "pursuit of truth" nonsense and just say "pregnant people", which DOES encompass anyone who is pregnant and who has existed, or may exist, or is currently existing.
Sorry but your argument doesn't make much sense. If I decide to identify myself as a dog or a lampshade, it doesn't mean that I am a dog or a lampshade. It's just words.
Similarly, a pregnant woman who for whatever reason has decided to call herself a man is, in reality, still a pregnant woman. The mere utterance of words does not alter that material fact.
Also worth considering is just how contradictory it is for her to try to identify into a sex class that is, by definition, incapable of being pregnant.
> Similarly, a pregnant woman who for whatever reason has decided to call herself a man is, in reality, still a pregnant woman.
Uh, no. Just according to you. “Woman” isn’t easy to just say like that, there’s no one definitive way to tell who is a woman.
I notice you didn’t point to any objective truth, most likely because you can’t. I think this conversation is way over your head, and I’m not going to try to convince people who do not have the mental capacity to understand what I’m saying.
Think about this logically. Consider a person. This person is pregnant. From this fact alone we can infer the presence of a female reproductive system. Which means that this person must be a woman.
Or, we can look at this from the other direction. Male sexual development does not result in a female reproductive system. Therefore this person is not a man.
You can perform this exercise of logic with any species that has individuals with different reproductive roles. For example: consider a chicken. This chicken lays eggs. From this we know that this chicken has a female reproductive system. Therefore this chicken must be a hen, not a cock.
> This person is pregnant. From this fact alone we can infer the presence of a female reproductive system.
No, no you can't. You can in 99% of circumstances, but not absolutely. They may also have a penis, or testicles, or any combination of reproductive organs. Yes, really.
But even if you could assume this, which you can't, you ALSO can't assume that a female reproductive system makes a woman. Because gender is complicated.
For example, you might call the bank teller "ma'am". Did you examine her reproductive organs? No, right? So this should be impossible - how did you know she was a woman?
Because, regardless of what bumbling idiots on the internet will claim, gender is inherently a social construct. You understand she is a woman because of the societal context of her clothes, her face, her hair, her makeup, and 1001 other tiny little things. Your brain then computes these all together and you determine "woman". But, she could have a penis.
In fact, just statistically speaking, you've encountered many women with penises and you will never know who they are, because they are women by your own perception. The same goes with men. Whether you choose to acknowledge this or remain a bumbling idiot, I do not care. This conversation is stupid, and frankly beneath me.
If you are unaware that pregnancy requires a female reproductive system and that this is the process the female reproductive system in humans and most other mammals is specialized for, then I would very much recommend you learn more before attempting to discuss this topic. At the very least, please look up what a uterus is and its role in gestation.
As for your view of women being "clothes, hair and makeup", this is a remarkably sexist perspective and I would urge you to rethink your understanding on this as well.
You’re being purposefully dishonest, as none of this is what I’ve said. You can’t just ignore what I wrote and fill in something that is easier for you to argue - this makes you look unbelievably stupid.
I wrote: "This person is pregnant. From this fact alone we can infer the presence of a female reproductive system."
You replied with: "No, no you can't."
From this, it is reasonable to assume that you either you don't understand that pregnancy requires a female reproductive system, or that you don't understand what the female reproductive system is.
You wrote: "You understand she is a woman because of the societal context of her clothes, her face, her hair, her makeup, and 1001 other tiny little things."
From that, it is reasonable to assume that you have a view of women based on sexist stereotyping around clothes, hair and makeup.
If you don't like the ideas that your words convey, that's on you for writing them.
> You wrote: "You understand she is a woman because of the societal context of her clothes, her face, her hair, her makeup, and 1001 other tiny little things."
> From that, it is reasonable to assume that you have a view of women based on sexist stereotyping around clothes, hair and makeup.
The person you are responding to was identifying the markers that cause the average person to make a snap decision on whether someone is a "he" or a "she" when encountering complete strangers on a day to day basis. If you don't use these factors to determine how you would address a person you've never met, what do you use? Do you demand to see their genitals or birth certificate?
You didn't answer my question. When you meet a stranger, how do you decide which words to use for them if not the way they're purposely choosing to present themselves?
Facial structure, body shape, voice. Humans have sufficient sexual dimorphism and are attuned to the differences enough to make this distinction correctly almost all of the time.
This is how we can, in most cases, ascertain a person's sex regardless of how they're attired.
It's also why the other commenter's view of women being "clothes, hair and makeup" is so absurd. A change of clothes, a haircut, and wiping off makeup doesn't somehow change women to men, or remove the ability of others to recognize sex.
Also, even if a person manages to disguise their sex or impersonate the opposite sex, this doesn't change the reality of their sex. Just may obscure it from observation, for some observers.
A friend of mine has a cat, which she's had since a kitten. When the cat was given to her, she was told it is male. However, when she took the cat to the vet for vaccinations, she was informed that the cat is in fact female.
A mistaken assumption doesn't change the underlying reality.
If she hadn't taken the cat to the vet and hadn't otherwise realized that the cat is female, and later, the cat had become pregnant, then she wouldn't be exclaiming how amazing it is to see a male pregnancy. No, she would understand that the cat is female, because only female cats can be pregnant.
No you've missed the point, which is that "people" includes both women and men.
Men cannot be pregnant, which is obvious from the fact that male sexual development does not produce a female reproductive system.
The term "pregnant people" is not just unnecessarily obfuscating but also linguistically erases the group of people who can actually be pregnant - that is, women.
You described a sibling with a female reproductive system, who has been pregnant. This means that your sibling must be a woman.
That you refer to her as your brother rather than your sister implies that she calls herself a man, and that because she calls herself a man you have chosen to do the same.
You are of course free to immerse yourself in the fiction that she is a man, and make self-contradictory statements like "my brother is a man who has been pregnant." But it would be odd to expect others to agree with this, seeing as it is not based in reality.
It doesn't. As you've been told already, you're wrong about this.
> But it would be odd to expect others to agree with this, seeing as it is not based in reality.
Fortunately for my brother and the countless other trans people in this world, scientific consensus is on their side. You and those in power right now might disagree, but your kind has been defeated before and will be defeated again.
Getting back to the point of the thread, it's fine if you want to hold the personal belief that your sister is your brother. No-one is stopping you from that, nor should they. You could believe she's a cat and gave birth to a litter of kittens if you like. That is your freedom of belief.
However, the CDC should have its focus in reality, not fiction. If a woman says she's a man, she does not somehow transform into a man. This is a nonsensical belief.
It's a bit like Catholics believing that bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ. Fine for them to hold that fictional belief if they want to, but it would look ridiculous if the CDC published this within their hematology resources as if it's a fact.
To state that men can be pregnant is incorrect, and has no scientific consensus. The male reproductive system is incapable of pregnancy. You can try to "defeat" this but it's a losing battle, as it is plainly false.
The blanket removal of all pages in the women's health category is certainly an interesting choice. I guess the next step after denying that there may be more than two genders is to ... deny that there's more than one? Or that gender exists at all? Equality at last!
Honestly, no idea; but I'd certainly wonder why the question flipped from what pages were removed that shouldn't have been, to whether they got enough traffic to merit talking about at all. Maybe acknowledge the prior answer before moving the goalpost?
Seriously done with excusing brutish behavior. After everything we have observed over the last 8 years why would I give this administration the benefit of the doubt?
They’re shutting down this government until it is just the police and military left. And then what?
I realized we had a material and significant education problem back in the early 80's, and have been an alarmist about our manufacturing obedient fools for decades. Now we have a critical mass, and the nation is crumbling while large numbers just watch dumbfounded. Moronic? The end of the USA is here. For fucks sake, Fox News is #1 in the USA.
American police will shoot people dead in the streets with impunity, the military industrial complex engages in constant wars regardless of popular sentiment and the American government is currently being carved up by neo-nazis and oligarchs but you can legally be racist on the internet. I guess it truly is the land of the free.
The UK seems to be actively covering up the mass rape of little girls and throwing dissidents in prison. They've sustained mass immigration for decades against their own peoples' will. The US just shook off, at least in part, the same mass immigration and the same clamping down of free speech in the US. It's not the only bar, but I would definitely consider it a resounding success. I can't help but think the 1st and 2nd amendment play a part because the 1st is obviously implicated and the 2nd is required to maintain the 1st.
> The UK seems to be actively covering up the mass rape of little girls
They're doing the worst cover up ever given grooming gangs and where they operate have been headlines in the UK for decades.
What they're not very good at is keeping the UK citizens at large well informed with a realistic sense of proportion given the scale of child sexual abuse far exceeds the activities of grooming gangs.
Thank you for actually advocating for the most rational and realistic response to this situation. While one cannot expect peace from this, it is better to be in open communication than to be left to create images of what they think they are up against.
Seems that a lot of people prefer the approach of "surrender absolutely everything to Putin preemptively". Granted America is at basically zero risk of a Russian invasion, but letting Putin roams free means that Ukraine would only be the first step. I don't really know what Putin's Europe once he gets it all would look like but I don't expect human rights to be a part of it.
The people advocating the "approach of surrender absolutely everything to Putin preemptively" and "people saying helping Ukraine should be avoided" are very different - and are both still pretty strong interpretations. Instead of looking at cartoonish arguments people have - what's the best argument you've come across for not supplying Ukraine with weapons? Have you heard any that seem reasonable at all to you? Which is the most reasonable?
Because it's what the aggressor has been saying all along:
"That is why it is so important to achieve all the goals of the special military operation. To push back the borders that threaten our country as far as possible, even if they are the borders of Poland," said Medvedev.
It's a random utterance written in a personal telegram channel by a man with little real power. Using it as a basis for such a far reaching conclusion about Putin's intent to conquer all of Europe is quite strange to put it politely.
That's merely a tactic for making threats with plausible deniability. Message gets transmitted, but in a way that shifts authorship away from its true source. Trump uses "people are saying" in this manner, Putin has an actual lackey in flesh doing the talking.
The grandparent was mistaken about an intent to conquer "all" of Europe - but similar threats have been made against Poland and the Baltics (as Putin's appetite for direct annexation seems to be limited to territories of the former Russian Empire).
Communicating through sockpuppets like Medvedev is exactly how a gaslighter par excellence like Putin operates. And Medvedev isn't just any Kremlin flacky, but was Putin's nominal successor at one point. To pretend to not be aware that his messaging on the subject is ultimately Putin's is quite strange, to put it politely.
>Communicating through sockpuppets like Medvedev is exactly how a gaslighter par excellence like Putin operates.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Putin's Munich speech in 2007 was as direct as it gets.
Anyway, your suggestion that Putin telegraphs his true intent (to occupy Poland and Baltics) through sockpuppet doesn't make any sense -- why would anyone do that? Medvedev playing bad cop routine -- that I can imagine, but what you are suggesting is quite strange, to put it politely.
> Surely if one side is a Russian asset it would be less likely we go to war with them?
Difficult to estimate because the situation is de-stabilising--the assurances of MAD no longer hold if one side thinks it can prevent the other from launching.
Why would Russia attack the US if the US was under their thumb? It makes no sense. MAD prevents countries who are opposed to each from attacking each other. The reason the US and the UK don't go to war is not because of MAD.
Not sure it has to make sense. It just has to convince people long enough for people who are driving for war to get their war. Hardly any of it seems to make any sense at all.
Well, Trump fired a bunch of diplomats, and never hired replacements (or replaced them with donors with no relevant experience), which hollowed out US foreign policy.
The Biden administration largely turned the lights back on in the parts of the government you are asking about, I think. They tried, at least. The GOP tried to block re-hiring foreign policy experts towards the beginning of his administration.
Every admin gets to set up their State Dept. Biden could have done whatever he wanted with regard to stationing diplomats.
Moreover, The Russia and China embassies were not affected And importantly there were not active conflicts, saber rattling and serious instigations as we have now. I mean, who gives a rat's arse about the ambassador to Paraguay.
Just the other week, the admin told the USN to prep for war against China in '27.
We assassinated an Iranian major general [1]! We were occupying Afghanistan, supporting Riyadh in its war on the Houthis and ramping up troops deployed in Syria and Iraq [2].
> saber rattling and serious instigations as we have now
The Trump administration wasn't instigating China [3]?
It is ketosis though, the benefits have proposed mechanisms of action that are directly downstream of the entirely separate ketone-based metabolic pathway.
