Actually, leaking secrets by air gapped computers is really, really old.
I know that e.g. in 1985 the (west) german army had tempest rules e.g. for mobile elint systems. You couldn't use a normal computer for e.g. triangulation, or to look up things in databases. The reason was that even back then video of a normal computers could be monitored from more than 100 m away.
It might be that just your knowledge of history is lacking.
Look for example to America (i mean the continent, there is no country named that). Civilisation brought extinction to various indigenous tribes, but in norther and central america. It brought slavery. In a way, we are over that now, aren't we?
Look for example to Europe (I'm so glad that no european country is so full of it and call itself just "Europe"). They had hundreds of wars in a 10 year period. Some small ... but some like the 30 year long war more devastating than even the 2nd world war.Sure, some people there (look into ex-jugoslavia or look into Russia) still think that mass-killing people is good. Oh, did I mention 2nd world war? Then look there, too. And how one society thought they have the right to extinguish Jews, Gypsies, Jehovas Witnesses, mental ill people and basically any political opponent. I still think we can say that we are over such a thing.
Look for example to Asia. There was a country that waged war on China because China was not buying enough Opium. Or look like the asian golden horde devastated with utter cruelty whole (at the time) mega-cities. And they brough the bubonic plague on top of it ...
Or look at Africa. I mentioned the slaver for America ... but actually african tribes captured people from other tribes and sold them. We can't say that slavery is totally abolished in Africa (I heard the Boko Haram does it) --- but certainly not at the scale it used to be.
If you think that society develops backwards, then just looking at how things used to be 100, 200 or 500 years.
Semites are also e.g. Arabs. It comes from linguistic science and denotes people speaking Hebraic, Arabic or new-Aramaic languages. Look up the philologist August Ludwig von Schlözer who coined the term if that is new to you.
Also, criticizing a country is something very normal.
When one criticizes the Japan of 1930 to 1945 ... was this anti-zen? Or anti-nipponic? Or was it about their government?
When one criticizes the Syria of 1971-1924 ... what this anti-islamistic? Or anti-arabic? Or was it about their government, specifically their dictator?
When one criticizes the Israel of recent times ... is this anti-jewish? Or anti-semitic? Or is it about their government and various movements in said country?
It's only when we criticize the Israel government that suddenly people intermix politics with religion. And also with belonging to long extinct tribe groups. Or that they blame e.g. a synagogue congregation in Denmark with human-right violations of Israel settlers. Suddenly people stop being able to differentiate.
I see that there are countries that are anti-jewish (like Iran). And Persians aren't Semites, so maybe they are also anti-semitic, I can't judge this. But neither Iran nor Yemen or other puppet-organizations like the Hezbollah rule the UN. I'm quite sure that they can't even nudge the UN.
So claiming that the UN is anti-semitic is un-factional. I have seen zero evidence, and the people claiming this haven't brought up any evidence. The most they can bring up is that some UN sub-organization doesn't do the exact bidding of the current Israel government. Or that some UN sub-organization has the occasional mole or spy amongst them ... but hey, I don't want to know how many organizations have the odd moles or spy from the Mossad in them. That doesn't make them wholly israel-controlled.
Well, they can do things that normally US americans never do: look at what other countries do.
High tides aren't new, and there are areas in the world that battle them since decades. E.g. at the north sea in Germany.
The the governments gave money to their universities and they made studies: how would a high tide impact the area? Some of the impact was obvious, since there have been disastrous floods. But some are not, e.g. of the economical impact. And then they again put money into universities, to let them study hydrology and water-related civil engineering to a much higher degree.
And so we got more modern versions of dams, the harbours and naval bases were protected. Even the rivers were protected, since a high tide travels upwards the river. See for example the https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidersperrwerk (sorry, didn't find an english version -> look at the pictures, learn a foreign language, use LLM translation)
But ... all of this is weak compared what the Dutch did regarding hydrology. They not only made protection buildings, but they also made buildings to convert ex-ocean into arable and livable lands. One large example is e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works
So if you look for people that are good at studying the impact of floods (civil and economically) and that are good at doing anything against ... there are possibilities.
You must however tame your ICE. No dutch engineer is willing to work in the USA if the ICE puts him randomly in deportation camps, like they even did for a Swiss journalist of a conservative (!) outlet.
The US already spends more than the EU (combined) on hydrology and civil engineering. The US already has the expertise to do anything like that. ICE is an on issue for a dutch engineer working legally in the US.
Solar can definitely make it through a couple of cloudy days.
This is because people that bring that argument act like every house is it's own electric island. But that's far from the truth. In developed countries the electric grid is HIGHLY interconnected. Look at this beautiful map: https://www.entsoe.eu/data/map/
So, how likely is it that it's cloudy in Bulgaria and Spain and Germany and UK and Hungary and and and ...
(It's only the US that decided to mis-design their grid. Instead of one united, where each one can help the others, they have 4 different grid. That is also one of the reason why the SAIDI --- duration of power interruptions per customer and year --- is so terribly bad).
Also, if you buy your solar cells to work with ambient light, put them into east-west (instead of south) and use an inverter that doesn't use 50W just for itself --- then you can also get power WHEN it it cloudy. Enough to sustain e.g. your router, fridge etc. Not enough to charge an EV.
But... for a day-night-cycle we have local batteries. They got cheap in the last 5 years. I mean, the cheaper ones arrive at 100 €/ kWh.
And finally: no one every proposed that "a single solution is all we need". We don't need just Ford passenger cars. We also need vans. And trucks. And buses.
By limiting your thinking artificially to "How can I oppose a situation where ONLY solar panels provide power" you're doing your own reasoning power no favor. The starting premises is already faulty, almost like a strawman attack (invent some bogus scenario, attack that scenario, hope that others that can't think sharp fail for this bad reasoning).
The fun thing is that people like you post this again and again, in every discussion. Since years. As if you're unable to learn that the world isn't only "one solar island next to another solar island". Why is it so hard to understand that a grid is inherently connected? And that we have a multitude of ways to generate electric power?
In an ideal world no one would bother where power comes from. From "the grid" or "from local". Why should "the grid" get some benefit? Over local production? IMHO such a thinking artificially limits competition.
What should still bother the law makers is the impact "grid power" vs. "local power". E.g. if AI computing centers build gas turbines for local power, but that creates noise and air pollution.
"Balcony solar"'s idea is to get solar into the hand of people without almost no extra cost. By design, you can plug it in into a normal socket. So you don't even need to call an electrician. No new power cable needs to be installed. And the basic idea of this ("make it so simple that even 85 year old Aunt Mary can do it") is IMHO worthwhile.
For a regular solar, you need to check if your roof can withstand the weight and wind forces. You need to install electric lines, circuit breakers etc etc. All of this costs several factors more than the pure voltaic panels.
Well, no. This one is one thousands of studies on it. And they narrowed things down (e.g. only looking at Denmark) and setting their projected numbers exactly so that the desired outcome arrived.
And usually (I did not read into detail here) the total cost of energy is never calculated.
In Europe, nuclear power plants usually don't have an insurance. It's the state that pays of the cleanup after an aftermath. So total cost is socialized.
Few countries have final deposits. With current technology, you need to operate them for thousands of years (e.g. guard them, so that no terrorists can get the material for "dirty bombs"). None of these total-cost studies calculates this in.
Many countries don't have their own source of uranium or the fabs to bring it up for usage in power plants. So it happens that by betting on solar, you bet on the goodwill of some external country. Did you know that most nuclear related companies worldwide used to be owned by the russian RosAtom? I have no idea if that is still true now after 5 years of war against Ukraine, so maybe the odd country seized mines or enrichment plants. But RosAtom owned stuff abroad, like Canada or Australia. Finding new ways if some terrorist country like russia suddenly ceases to supply you (like they did with gas) has a very high oppertunity cost. These studies usually don't plan in "second source" economic calculations.
In Germany, the four big electric power companies (e.g. Vattenfall, EON etc) say since decades that they don't want to open new nuclear power plants. Since it is not economically feasible. If the TCO would really be spectacular, then they would say differently. In those places, where they still open nuclear plants, like France, even a single block costs billions. I mean, one block estimated to cost 3 billion euro was costing 27 billion. Do these fabricated studies calculate in this grave error of factor 12? In France, EDF only works because it is state backed. If the TCO would be any good, they would swim in money like the senior Uncle Duck.
Governments have conflicting goals. You think "raise taxes" is the most important goal. But, believe it or not, some governments -- even conservative ones -- also have goals like "protect the envirnment".
In Germany for example, you are nominally required to register your balcony solar. Online, no fee. So it's easy. But .. there are no fines attached if you don't do it. And they don't ask for any taxes.
They are HAPPY that you do your local electricity power after Putin turned off gas export and it turned out that LPG import is way more costly (due to cooling and pressure, a lot of the stored energy is used for that during the transport/processing on that).
In Germany, there was even a process where the politics told the electrical engineers to not be so anal about electric security to make plug in of these devices into normal sockets a possibility. The VDE only wanted special sockets to be used. The politics said "Nope, too expensive for the normal people".
The idea that legislative and executive is only working AGAINST the people is invalid.
It happens that people need in planning things want to have numbers.
So for example a high voltage power line is planned to be installed between point A and B. Now, probably some land has to be bought. But maybe not everyone sells land. So maybe land is seized, for the good of all. But ... is it really for the good of alL? The government MUST know beyond a doubt it that line is really worthwhile for the entirety. They need hard planning numbers.
There are numerous scenarios available where a government --- or even private companies --- need dependable statistical numbers to do planning.
And that is e.g. the reason why in Germany businesses have to wire lots of data to a government statistical bureau. We all can then get the relevant statistics out of the 16 state and the one federal offices of statistics. Or (e.g in Germany) the "Bundesnetzagentur" uses it base decisions about the grid on it.
Or private people need to register (cost free, via web, at least in Germany) their balcony solar. Compared to what the businesses have to tell this is almost negligible. It only makes sense due to the sheer number of balcony solar installations.
I know that e.g. in 1985 the (west) german army had tempest rules e.g. for mobile elint systems. You couldn't use a normal computer for e.g. triangulation, or to look up things in databases. The reason was that even back then video of a normal computers could be monitored from more than 100 m away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)
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