Notices by Not Just Bikes 🇳🇱 (notjustbikes@social.notjustbikes.com)

Since releasing my oil video I've had so many people claiming that renewables will never work and we need nuclear power instead.

What's odd is that almost all of the messages mention that nuclear power is the only solution for the "base load".

I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and I took several nuclear science electives. I like nuclear energy. But I received so much "base load" gaslighting that I started to doubt my own understanding of the situation.

Energy consumption goes up and down throughout the day, but the "base load" is the minimum amount, even at the lowest point in the day. So nuclear power is good for providing this "base" because it's consistent and always running.

The issue is that renewables sometimes output so much electricity that, especially when it's sunny, the grid makes *way* too much electricity. The electricity consumption of the grid minus renewables is called the "residual load", and it very very often goes NEGATIVE.

This means that the concept of "base load" is not really relevant, because there is no consistent base. And when the residual load goes negative, the wholesale price of electricity goes negative as well.

Last year the Netherlands had negative wholesale electricity prices for about 7% of the year, and that amount is only going to grow.

You can't afford to run a nuclear reactor when electricity prices are negative, but you also can't shut it down every day either.

This was always my understanding of how renewables make the concept of "base load" irrelevant, again, as a person with a literal degree in Electrical Engineering.

But I was gaslit by so many people that I felt the need to research the current situation again today.

This could just be people using out of date information, but I suspect this is anti-renewables propaganda. Otherwise I don't know why so many people would even know what a "base load" is.

When I did some reading on the current situation, I found a lot of sites out of Australia that were repeating this "base load" idea, in the context of nuclear power.

I suspect that this is fossil-fuel propaganda.

Fossil fuel companies love promoting nuclear power because they know it takes decades to get a reactor built (if it gets built at all), and in the meantime, everyone keeps using fossil fuels.

It's the perfect way to cripple renewables without being obvious about it.

"While some people benefit from automobility, nearly everyone—whether or not they drive—is harmed by it. Slowing automobility’s violence and pollution will be impracticable without the replacement of policies that encourage Car Harm with policies that reduce it.”

This is a quote from a 2024 paper entitled, "Car harm: A global review of automobility’s harm to people and the environment", and I finally made a video about it (now on Nebula & Patreon):

https://nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-every-reason-to-hate-cars

My latest YouTube video is about the Stockholm metro, a metro system with some truly beautiful stations that they referred to as "the world's longest art gallery".

Some of these stations are seriously impressive.

https://youtu.be/WJCCDYbK0Gc

As if I didn't already have enough reason to recommend @TechConnectify, this video is absolutely phenomenal and should be watched by everyone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM

My new Nebula show, Day Pass, will release on February 18th!

I'm genuinely excited about this show. It's super-fun to explore a city through its public transit system.

Here's the trailer that the Nebula team put together!

This post at the top of /r/greenland was very relatable, and it's the same opinion I heard from a lot of Canadians when I was back for Xmas.

https://www.reddit.com/r/greenland/comments/1qhhijq/to_every_american_whos_sorry/

The average American has NO idea how much the rest of the world hates the US, and will for decades to come.

Toronto just opened a brand new LRT line ... and it's really bad. 😭

https://youtu.be/Qjp7hqXgInI

RE: https://social.notjustbikes.com/@notjustbikes/115753003267807976

About to hop on! Join us if you can!

This was the top post on reddit today:

A woman in Seattle complains that her ~5km commute to work takes 45 minutes.

She goes on to complain that the city is building "6 new apartment complexes" nearby.

I don't want to dogpile her – she's a product of her environment – but it's yet another example of just how broken car-centric cities are.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1pnsody/i_live_3_miles_away_from_my_work_it_takes_me_45/

My Dutch viewers will never understand just how bad it is in so many US and Canadian cities.

There is absolutely no way that a regular 5 kilometre commute could routinely take 45 minutes here. Because people have alternatives to driving!

On the bright side, Seattle just elected the progressive Katie Wilson as mayor, who was previously the executive director of the Transit Riders Union.

She won by only ~2000 votes! So make sure YOU vote in YOUR local elections!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Wilson

@paulnatsuo I talked about this in my Toronto streetcars video. The TTC is an extremely (small-c) conservative organisation.

If they've always been doing something a certain way, they'll keep doing it forever, and they are never willing to look outside of North America.

Even reading the minutes from the meeting about signal priority they kept talking about how it would be revolutionary in North America to let the trams go before left-turning cars. 🙄

@Mab_813 @vfrmedia @hittitezombie
SUVs and pickup trucks became so popular in my hometown that the city was forced to update their parking regulations to require larger parking spaces. The same will happen in Europe if we don't stop them first.

And here's an American Ford F-350 next to the most popular car in Europe (Dacia Sandero).

There's a reason why we need to do everything we can to prevent people from driving these stupid American trucks in Europe.

So many Europeans are telling me that they've been seeing a lot of the "huge" Ford Ranger trucks appearing in their cities.

Wait until they find out that the Ford Ranger is the small Ford pickup truck, and all of the rest of them are significantly larger. 😬

https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/ford-ranger-2022-4-door-pickup-vs-ford-f-350-2016-4-door-pickup-crew-cab/

This wasn't supposed to be an hour and a half long, but as the insane shit piled up, I just couldn't bring myself to cut any of it, because the insanity IS the message here.

I always knew that vehicular cycling as a design philosophy was questionable and based on shaky research. I had NO idea that it was founded on lies and misleading data from the start.

By the way, Nebula now has free trials! Sign up now and see how much you can watch in 3 days. 😂

https://nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-this-is-why-cycling-is-dangerous-in-america

@mausmalone oh wow that's insane.

30 mph (~50 km/h) is really really fast. I get that people on racing bikes CAN achieve that (especially down hill), but designing ALL infrastructure for that speed is just stupid.