[Nicholas_C]

>That's a ridiculous comparison, The fact of the matter is that those decisions are completely logical.

I don't think shutting down an entire industry in a knee jerk reaction is logical. Gently paring down fossil fuel energy consumption is logical. I think the extreme reaction is the illogical mentality that he was talking about.

[pzuraq]

It's more than a knee jerk reaction though, there are a lot of reasons to speed up the switch to solar and renewables. Global warming may have been a catalyst, but it was going to happen eventually and they figured sooner rather than later.

[anigbrowl]

Yes, but if you want to do something about global warming it'd be a lot smarter to keep the nuclear power stations running and take coal plants offline instead. Nuclear power has a spotty safety record overall, and the consequences of a mistake can be acutely disastrous, but coal is likewise a chronic disaster.

[dmd]

> Nuclear power has a spotty safety record overall

This is so incredibly false it's on par with stating "commercial aviation has a spotty safety record overall".

[anigbrowl]

I disagree. There have been lots of low-level safety violations, and it's easy to find examples of chronic mismanagement. By 'spotty' I mean lots of small flaws, a few big ones here and there. Certainly, it has a good low ratio of deaths per megawatt of power generated, but such metrics are not the whole story.

I'm very pro-nuclear, but don't think there's an mileage in blowing off safety concerns.

[pzuraq]

Agreed, I'm all for nuclear power personally and that is a somewhat less logical position, but the irrational fear of nuclear power is more of a worldwide phenomenon than a German one. All I'm saying is I think comparing American fear-culture to Germany's decision to quickly move to solar is at best apples to oranges and at worst completely nonsensical.

[specialist]

First mover advantage. Germany's early embrace is going to look pretty smart, in retrospect.

Ditto Google's early drive for lowering watts per flop in their data centers and seeking lower costs of energy.

GDP (economic growth, however it's measured) has tracked fossil fuel consumption. Some smart people are working to decouple the two.