Starting this year, in Romania you cannot put new PV capacity online without the storage for it, is mandatory. Possibly for existing ones, but I am not sure.
Yes, absolutely colossal amounts of batteries though - what if it’s quite hot but also cloudy for 5 days in a row?
You either have to significantly oversize the PV (easier said than done, when its energy density is already not that high per m2), or have enough batteries to last for multiple days of full load. If you do the maths that’s a lot of batteries
>what if it’s quite hot but also cloudy for 5 days in a row?
The main idea is to then import power from somewhere sunny and/or windy or mountainous, using money you saved when they had the rain and you had the sun.
Batteries and other storage mechanisms will gradually reduce the need for doing so, but aiming to entirely eliminate all need for cooperation with others seems a bit paranoid.
AFAIK the mountains are about as high as Wales? It looks like there's a 600MW storage scheme in the planning stages. That's about a third of the capacity of Wales's largest system (which is the biggest in Europe) and about twice the capacity of the second system.
It's a meaningful contribution I would have thought.
Can't speak for Hungary specifically, but the problem with flat terrain wrt hydro storage isn't just elevation difference - which can be offset with flowrate - it's the large surface area to storage and to depth ratios.
Large lake means more losses, mainly due to evaporation, but seepage is also to be expected. Now put this fact in the thread's context: water shortage/stress...
"Most of the country has an elevation of less than 200 m. Although Hungary has several moderately high ranges of mountains, those reaching heights of 300 m or more cover less than 2% of the country."
"Hydroelectricity is not prevalent in Hungary due to unsuitable geographical conditions and civil resentment. The country's capacity of hydroelectricity was 57 MWs in 2015."
I'm fairly sure that when it's dark where I am (because I'm in the shadow cast by Earth), it's also dark in orbit above me (because it's in the shadow cast by Earth).
In Hungary abortion is technically legal but only surgically, and the public health system is mental torture including being forced to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus (thanks to our local fascist party). Women on Web is a million times more humane. It's not like anyone thinks "oh I'm pregnant I'll just pop a pill and it's solved".
> That's clearly already a child and I will object.
Not your body, not your choice.
Late stage abortions in order to protect the live of the pregnant woman happen. Unviable pregnancies happen. You know what happens in countries where abortion laws are so strict that even a medical emergency will land the doctor in legal trouble? The pregnant woman dies during or before childbirth.
> Hang on, how is listening to the heartbeat mental torture?
It's guilt-tripping based on an unscientific view of pregnancy. A foetus' heart starts beating way before it is even remotely close to being a child rather than a lump of cells.
> If it was so clear-cut the issue wouldn't be so polarising.
It's polarising because the topic is so very useful to get religious people who want to impose their holy book on everyone else to vote for you.
As of 2018, a study found that 95% of all biologists affirm the biological view that a human's life begins at fertilization.
> being a child rather than a lump of cells
A child is an individual organism of the species Homo sapiens. Since the majority of biologists (who are the de facto subject matter experts here) affirm that human life begins at fertilization, your opinion is patently unscientific.
You may argue, as some do, that there are cases, including abortion, where it is permissible to take a human life, however your opinion as expressed is in fact unscientific, and I would encourage you to question the cogency of your conclusions.
> The whole point of this paper you're citing is that the scientific definition isn't relevant to the ethical debate.
I don't think we have the same reading of the paper. Scientific facts inform ethical decisions, they are antecedent to them. We can't decide whether something is good or bad if we don't understand what it is.
But to the point, the comment I was responding to wanted to assert that pro-life arguments rested on some "unscientific" premise that a "lump of cells" is a "child," which is actually scientific consensus; my citation of that paper was to refute that claim.
Whether or not it is ethical to end a human child's life under certain circumstances is a moral question, but the fact that it is in fact a human child is scientifically settled.
> I don't think we have the same reading of the paper.
Strong agreement here.
> Scientific facts inform ethical decisions, they are antecedent to them.
Sometimes, as your paper is saying is the case, they're orthogonal to them.
> but the fact that it is in fact a human child is scientifically settled.
From your article, emphasis mine:
"While this article’s findings suggest a fetus is biologically classified as a human at fertilization"
The problem you have is that this paper doesn't discuss children at all, merely that a fetus is of the human species. It's basically tautological so of course it's essentially unanimous. A human fetus is a human fetus and not, say, a chicken fetus.
Ah yes, conception. The magical moment a body gets 'ensouled'. Wanting to protect literal embryos is considered a rather extreme view outside of Gilead though.
Convenient strawman, but you're the one bringing "Gilead" into this discussion. My argument is scientific, and I would appreciate it if your counterargument was too.
It's torture because abortion is never a trivial decision to make - by the time a person has decided to get an abortion and not become a parent we should respect their wishes. If a decision has been made there's no reason to cause pointless emotional grief before executing the operation.
It is mainly so because of lack of education and emotional manipulation into mixing up human biology and human personhood. Heartbeat doesn’t make a person. It’s not even a requirement to be a person (people with continuous-flow artificial hearts lack it). The first specks of personhood appear a lot later in the process.
A normal sane reaction is “yeah, there’s already a working cardiovascular system, better stop it before the organism develops even further.”
This said, it’s an obviously pointless and harmful delay. There is no reason to check a heartbeat of a fetus if a mother decides she doesn’t want to carry it.
Abortion should be possible at 8 months - it absolutely must be possible in the cases of complications to save the life of the mother. For other cases I believe it shouldn't be easily legal to ensure that people seek abortion aide earlier in their pregnancy but in the case someone is unaware (it does happen though it's outrageously rare) or in the case someone is prevented from seeking earlier care it should be an option. 8 months should be restricted purely because it can cause an immense amount of damage to your body and abortions at that point are technically complex so ideally people should be encouraged to make that decision earlier in the process.
In my personal opinion, though I am a bit in the fringe, person-hood doesn't come into being until a few years of development though if a baby is born and the family can't take care of it that's obviously a case where adoption would be preferred. Child rearing is a big life changing responsibility and I generally think it should only be undertaken voluntarily though the societal requirements and supports for child rearing in nearly all of the world put reasonable constraints on how far we can move in that direction[1].
1. As an example: financial obligations for child support are absolutely justified in societies where the financial strain on single parents isn't otherwise accounted for.
> Hang on, how is listening to the heartbeat mental torture?
How about if the state decided that it wouldn't force you to donate your organs to some dying person who needed them, but every time there was a person who needed your your organs and you declined you would have to sit and listen to their heartbeat for 20 minutes. Really sit and think about the person you're deciding to kill. After all, if you don't give your body to someone who needs it, you've killed them.
The whole point is to imply you are killing a baby. Like literally. The only reason for that law is that.
There is no medical reason. It does not address rational part of decisiom making either. It is an attempt at forced emotional guilting by medical professional. And to drag you through it.
Just want to point out, it’s polarising because it’s a wedge issues that divides voting blocks neatly, and nothing to do with it being The Issue that it is.
More people die from obesity, cars, flu, preventable illness, etc. But we discuss endless this one issue… it’s for political science reasons not humanity/moral/etc reasons.
It's different from those other cases because it's like getting in a car accident and other people saying you can't get treatment because it's against their religious values, or saying you're not allowed to lose weight because they don't like it.
"Torture" is definitely hyperbolic, but being forced to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus is not something that's based on any kind of science or rational argument, it's quite transparently emotional manipulation.
I agree with you that it's a delicate issue, I really do. I'm also tired of taking infinite psychic damage trying to steel-man the arguments of people who are clearly not interested in operating at the level of steel.
> Clearly you believe in the primacy of preserving life. I am wondering if your belief extends to after the child is born?Clearly you believe in the primacy of preserving life. I am wondering if your belief extends to after the child is born?
Are you suggesting that, because I object to abortion a day before delivery, that I must be some kind of misogynistic monster?
Because that's where the line is drawn in this current subthread - 1 day before delivery. If you cannot understand that people consider that a child (i.e. 1 day before delivery) then you have no hope of swaying your audience to your side of the argument at all!
Thinking about what they're doing and what those things mean.. some people just do what they want without putting a lot of thought into anything. We shouldn't make it easy for that type of person to hide from what they're doing.
Friendly reminder that at the 6th week, when the heartbeat is detectable, the body is still undecided whether it will keep the fetus. It's not an indicator of anything - just something we're emotionally attached to as humans.
20-25% otherwise healthy pregnancies end spontaneously before the 12th week and it's a mechanism used in non-surgical abortion.
At the 8th week my SO's gynecologist made an offhand remark not to get attached just yet, because we were still within the window where that happens.
What does that matter? You're the one making the decision, not nature. Personally I would give anything to be able to have a child, so honestly I don't understand why anyone would want to terminate a pregnancy. I'm willing to admit that people's lives are complicated and it's not my place to make that decision for others, but we shouldn't help people hide from what they're doing.
> but I also think that it's a good idea to know what you're doing
Why do so many people say this about women and their bodies? You seriously think the vast majority of women considering an abortion haven’t given it much thought? Should they all have to face more obstructions and guilt trips and patronizing lectures because a handful maybe don’t? It’s ridiculous.
As for the “heartbeat” standard, I’m not getting in to it, suffice to say that should not be a bar here for deciding a woman’s rights.
> I stand by this comment, downvote all you like folks.
I wasn’t going to until this part of your comment.
And by the way, men are allowed to have opinions about abortion. You can't just play the woman card and act like that changes anything men might have to say.
They are just applying the same logic behind all prescription medication to abortion pills.
To this day, despite having taken them for the past 30 years, I still require a new prescription for Adderall because society deemed the addiction risk too high to avoid inserting a doctor into the equation every 30 days.
Abortifacients can cause the death of the person taking them. That’s something no one wants.
Can some people manage the risks of prescription medication on their own? Yes, but like with Adderall, society tends to lean towards caution and considers a doctor’s visit to be morally neutral as doctors aren’t expected to moralize and guilt but perform a medical service.
Personally, I think a doctor who guilts someone over medication should have their license revoked. There’s a time and place for such feelings but medical interventions are life and death.
I am a woman. And I only said that last part because I'm sick of seeing the internet hide contrary opinions just because they don't want to hear something.
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