Highest Solar Generation Per Capita
u/AlternativeRoyal6226 — 10 hours ago
u/PanzerWatts
r/TrueUnpopularOpinion r/ProfessorFinance r/Energiewende r/Netherlands r/OptimistsUnite r/ProfMemeology r/DoomerCircleJerk r/CriticalDrinker
▲ 925 r/OptimistsUnite
Test flight of largest all-electric aircraft used just $5 of electricity
arstechnica.comu/PanzerWatts — 3 days ago
▲ 164 r/OptimistsUnite
Per capita carbon dioxide emissions (pcCO2) from fossil fuels peaked globally in 2013
u/PanzerWatts — 9 days ago
▲ 52 r/OptimistsUnite
Agricultural total factor productivity growth by country (1971-2022)
u/PanzerWatts — 9 days ago
▲ 7 r/OptimistsUnite
Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the Water Treatment Sector
https://conference.nber.org/conf_papers/f240807.pdf
"Exploiting quasi-experimental variation in both the timing of adoption and outages, we estimate the causal impact of AI on electricity use, carbon emissions, and energy expenditures. We find that full-time AI control reduces plants’ electricity consumption and carbon emissions by 5.4% and 6% respectively, and energy expenditures by 8.2%, resulting in negative abatement costs, while also improving water effluent quality. The additional electricity demand generated by AI models represents less than 1% of these savings."
u/PanzerWatts — 12 days ago
▲ 413 r/OptimistsUnite
A new Gallup poll suggests that kindness is common
"A new Gallup poll suggests that kindness is common, though younger Americans see and offer kindness less often than older Americans."
"Muszynski and his colleagues found that a majority of Americans reported seeing kindness regularly in their everyday lives. Sixty percent said that they’d seen people acting in kind, respectful ways often or very often, while 65% said they’ve been the recipients of kind acts from someone in their community within the last seven days.
Also, 73% said that they viewed other Americans as generally very kind or somewhat kind—a figure that belies our worries to the contrary.
“What shows up in the media every day is a very unkind America,” says Muszynski. “At the grassroots level, people see kindness every day. It’s around us all the time.”
An even higher percentage of those polled, 90%, said they would be very comfortable or somewhat comfortable initiating a kind act toward a stranger—a heartwarming finding. Muszynski points out that this reflects the fact that people who witness kindness are more willing to pay it forward.
“If you see kindness, you do kindness,” says Muszynski. “It’s a natural empathy reaction.”"
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_our_fellow_americans_kinder_than_we_think
u/PanzerWatts — 22 days ago
I asked ChatGPT to describe the experience of being a mod here
💩 🍦
u/Agreeable_Sense9618 — 22 days ago
▲ 0 r/OptimistsUnite
67% of those surveyed have achieved or are pursuing the American dream.
" A majority of U.S. adults say they are living the American Dream and are proud to be Americans, while negative sentiments toward AI’s effect on the American Dream have risen, a new report from the Archbridge Institute reveals."
"According to the Archbridge Institute’s report, 67% of those surveyed have achieved or are pursuing the American dream.
Freedom of choice in how to live and having a good family life are essential aspects of the American Dream to those surveyed, followed by retiring comfortably and owning a home. Becoming wealthy is not a top priority, with 17% saying it is essential."
"“We are in a more positive situation than people think, and we can build from that position to continue removing barriers to the American Dream in our own lives and inspire others to do the same,” Schwarz said."
https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_a292924a-65fd-4092-8fec-b129bc9a3d26.html
u/PanzerWatts — 1 month ago
▲ 21 r/ProfessorFinance
A former professor was dragged out of his own lecture by Chinese police
"A former Tsinghua University professor was dragged out of his own lecture by Chinese police after a student reported him for "singing down" the economy. Dr. Zheng Yuhuang merely pointed out that China faces 20 to 30 years of economic stagnation. Within days, his entire 16-year online presence was completely erased. "
u/PanzerWatts — 1 month ago
▲ 183 r/OptimistsUnite
NASA: Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth
"From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25.
An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries led the effort, which involved using satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments to help determine the leaf area index, or amount of leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States."
u/PanzerWatts — 2 months ago
▲ 453 r/OptimistsUnite
Optimism is associated with exceptional longevity in 2 epidemiologic cohorts of men and women
Our results further suggest that optimism is specifically related to 11 to 15% longer life span, on average, and to greater odds of achieving “exceptional longevity,” that is, living to the age of 85 or beyond. These relations were independent of socioeconomic status, health conditions, depression, social integration, and health behaviors (e.g., smoking, diet, and alcohol use). Overall, findings suggest optimism may be an important psychosocial resource for extending life span in older adults.
u/PanzerWatts — 2 months ago
House price have risen steeply in many Western countries
"In fact, European housing shortages are generally worse than America’s. You can see this in the great dataset assembled by Katharina Knoll and her collaborators, of which we have reproduced a selection above. hey are now much higher than American house prices, which remained remarkably stable until recently, and which have only risen rather modestly in the last quarter of a century, though of course much more steeply in a few urban centers like San Francisco and Manhattan. Knoll found that about 80 percent of this increase is attributable to regulatory restrictions on housebuilding.
u/PanzerWatts — 2 months ago
China maintains an absolute advantage due to extremely low wages
Amazingly China's wage relative to GDP are even lower than India's wages. Essentially the authoritarian government enforces a low standard of living for the population and the rest of the economy reaps the rewards.
"The numbers on wages are striking. The share of China’s manufacturing output that is paid to workers fell from 6.3 percent in 1992 to 1.8 percent in 2010, and has recovered only to about 3.3 percent in 2024, roughly where it stood in 2002. For the economy as a whole, labor’s share of income is low by world standards. According to the International Labour Organization, that ratio—wage over manufacturing output—is lower in China than poor and rich economies alike, lower than in India, Brazil, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, or the United States.
This is not a side effect of an aging population or of automation but it is deeply rooted in the nature of its economic system and its political economy. It is where the capital-cost advantage and the labor-cost advantage turn out to come from the same source. When workers are paid less than the value of what they produce, the difference does not disappear. It goes to the other parts of the economy. Some of it goes to the government, whose share of the national wage bill has roughly doubled since the 1980s. The rest goes to the capital sector, enabling corporations and capital providers to make and to fund large-scale investment projects, build factories and power stations, invest in AI technologies and solar panels, and create an infrastructure the rest of the world envies.
In an economy the size of China, lowering a few percentage points of wage share of manufacturing output makes a huge difference."
"The same wage suppression that drives China’s success in trade across all factor intensities is also a steady transfer of income from Chinese households to Chinese companies and the Chinese state. It gives the country real power in the world: its control over rare earths, low-end chips, medicines, and the supply chains other countries depend on.
But its absolute advantage over foreign countries does not translate into prosperity to the people who produce it."
https://yashenghuang.substack.com/p/china-as-an-absolute-advantage-economy
u/PanzerWatts — 2 months ago