I am a sociology graduate in the global south and my interest in climate science has recently been spurred by the scientists' protest. What I've found is that the biggest contributor to climate change has been the current energy regime based on fossil fuels - with a vast majority of global GHG emissions being contributed by use of coal, oil, and gas.

Therefore, one of the biggest steps in combating the climate crisis and increasing GHG emissions is a transition to low-carbon renewable energy such as solar and wind power. However, one of the arguments against the feasibility of this is that these energy sources are inadequate 'baseload' power sources.

Through my own research, I now understand that what 'baseload power generation' means is the minimum amount of energy needed to be produced practically 24/7 in order to address daily energy demand and that the intermittence of renewable sources does present a roadblock to this.

I wanted to know how such a model for 'baseload' energy has emerged as the dominant model for energy planning. Was this an intuitive development? I've been looking for archival information on when the term 'baseload' was first used in energy planning but I seem to have reached a brick wall so I ask the historians of Reddit for some insights.

I understand that Edward, being a seemingly fanatical Protestant from the little we can gather of his short life and reign, wanted to secure a Protestant succession and was determined that his piously Catholic sister would not succeed the throne following what looked to be his oncoming death. What I can't wrap my head around is why he, amusingly following in his father's footsteps with a desperate lack of a male heir, chose to pass over Elizabeth in favour of the more obscure Lady Jane Grey, whose claim to the throne rested on being the granddaughter of Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VII.

The most typical answer seems to rest on Elizabeth's bastardry, as he couldn't in good conscience pass his throne onto someone who had no right to it. That has never made much sense to me as if a bastard cannot inherit, why was Edward so frantic to push Jane - and her male heirs to be specific - so much when neither of his illegitimate sisters could inherit either? The answer, of course, is that his father had rather inconveniently for him returned Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession. So if the answer as to why he was refusing to pass the throne onto Mary was a legal argument, it was clear Edward didn't give a damn about the law as he was clearly willing to overturn Acts of Parliament and his own father's will explicitly stating the throne should pass to them if Edward should die with no heirs. If all Edward wanted was to prevent Mary, why was Elizabeth not the natural choice for him? And there were plenty of ways he could ad hoc this decision with any line of legalistic mumbo jumbo that could be far more rationally justified than a relatively unknown cousin.

An alternative answer in cases such as these might be personal animosity, that while they might have shared the same religion, Edward didn't like Elizabeth much either, as all the evidence indicates he held typically male chauvinist views given how many times he had to revise his Device on account of there being no male heirs to inherit. It's perfectly plausible that Edward didn't trust either sister, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Indeed, as much as royal siblings can have a productive relationship in this period, Edward and Elizabeth got on rather well, embracing each other when they got the news of their father's death. The same is true of Mary, but while the religious question seems to have fractured the relationship between Edward and Mary, the same cannot be said of Elizabeth who remained the quiet, dutiful sister to her brother while he was on the throne. So why then did Edward not choose her?

It has never made sense to me that if Edward wanted to prevent a Catholic heir, he would not choose Elizabeth who had more of a claim to the throne than Jane, matched Edward's religious preferences and Edward got on with and would have had no personal reason to bar from the throne, save the fact that she was a woman but since he was willing to dispense with that standard for Jane's sake, why not Elizabeth's too? The only argument I can rationalise is that Jane was already married so effectively guaranteed to soon produce male heirs unlike Elizabeth but since she would have come to the throne much younger, I think she could have been more successfully pressured into marrying than in our series of events, especially if Edward stipulated as such in his device.

It's entirely possible there is some factor I've overlooked or am simply ignorant to, but the usual answers I get from this topic don't really seem to add up to me as if Edward was willing to break the law to protect Protestantism and place his cousin on the throne, why not his sister instead?

i’ve heard a lot of people both argue for and against this claim, and was hoping I could get more clarity on how true it is here.

In the tv show 1864, which is about the Second Dano-Prussian War, it seems that the general staff of the millitary has a good plan of organized retreats until they get to a position where they can use the Danish maritime advantage.

But the plan gets ruined by interference from the civilian government who insist on the defence of Dybbøl. At Dybbøl the danes were utterly defeated leading to an overal loss of the war.

Was this interference by the government in fact one of the main reasons the danes lost, or was the war lost from the start. To me it seems that a relatively weak country like Denmark could never defeat a country like Prussia allied with Austria.

What in real life was the actual plan of the general staff of denmark, and in what way was this tenable? And was this influenced so much by the government as shown in the show 1864?

Hello, I've noticed a few instances where yodeling seems to be ingrained in old cowboy culture. Songs like "Stars of the Midnight Ranges" "Eso es el amor" or even cowboy characters like Jesse from Toy Story use or are known for their yodeling. Was this really a thing in "the old west" culture of the mid 1800s to early 1900s or is it something that was romanticized by the cowboy pop culture that came in the mid 1900s?

I don't understand the full breadth of the supposed political organizational innovations of the poleis that began to develop in the Greek Archaic Age. The best I have been able to infer is that constitutional organization/law was not prominent among the Bronze Age Greeks. Is this is a significant enough accomplishment, or are there more marked differences I should note?

Hello there, I'm looking for good books to pick up on Saxon history. Most of what I've found is listed as "Anglo-Saxon", but I'm looking for history that distinguishes between Saxons and Angles and focuses on the former. Does anybody have any good recommendations? I'm coming across things like Whitlock's "The Warrior Kings of Saxon England" and Humble's "The Fall of Saxon England" - has anybody read these? Are they any good?

Hello Historians!

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I'm looking for information about Southern Germanic religion before Christianization. Specifically what the full pantheon was of the Germanic Tribes once known as the Alemanni, Suevi, and Marcomanni respectively?

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I appreciate any info or links that you can offer on this topic.

I know the answer is probably “to make it easier to differentiate” or “the Lost Cause” but I’m wondering why we say Union rather than American when discussing the US civil war. Union vs Confederates rather than American/US vs. Confederates? And for those who teach history, have you ever thought about making this switch in your teaching? Why or why not?

I'm most interested in knowing more about the Progressive Era in anticipation of the new Oxford History of the US volume but would also like to read more about the evolution of the SCOTUS, the history of monetary policy from founding to present, and the rise and fall of labor from Gilded Age to the end of WW1.