[HN Gopher] A Clean Energy Milestone: Renewables Pulled Ahead of...
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A Clean Energy Milestone: Renewables Pulled Ahead of Coal in 2020
in the US
Author : finphil
Score : 25 points
Date : 2021-02-28 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (insideclimatenews.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (insideclimatenews.org)
| Magodo wrote:
| Can someone help me out with my cognitive dissonance. On the one
| hand, I keep reading about how climate change will destroy
| everything very soon and the first person to die of serious
| climate change has already been born and on the other hand,
| there's always hopeful news like this... If the first is true why
| bother with renewable energy at all and why celebrate it as a
| milestone. If the latter is true, then what's the point of
| worrying about the climate at all?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Like coronavirus, it's not a binary but a question of how well
| or badly we cope with it.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Human driven climate change is going to do significant damage.
| It's not going to be halted in a mere decade or two. But it's
| always possible to make the consequences a little more severe
| by burning more fossils, or to make them a little less severe
| by burning less.
|
| The people who claim "only X years left to save the world from
| severe climate change" are stretching the truth for effect or
| don't understand the primary research well enough. There are
| certain milestones that we'll pass if we don't make deep
| emissions cuts in those X years, but there's not a bright
| dividing line between "ok" and "doomed." Telling people that
| there _is_ a bright line coming up in just a few years is
| likely to induce cynicism /apathy when we start living on the
| far side of that line.
| pasttense01 wrote:
| Because articles like this are deceptive. In terms of climate
| change: 1. You need to look at all sources of carbon emissions
| (not just electricity). 2. You need to look at the whole world
| --not just the United States.
|
| Overall it turns out there is a modest improvement in the U.S.
| and the other Western industrialized countries.[And even with
| the modest improvement in the Western industrialized countries,
| they are still putting massive amount of carbon into the
| atmosphere every year.]
|
| However there is a worsening in the third world--and they are
| responsible for more emissions that the Western industrialized
| countries. Thus for example you see articles like:
|
| Mexico was once a climate leader - now it's betting big on coal
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/15/mexico-coal-fo...
| tzs wrote:
| > However there is a worsening in the third world--and they
| are responsible for more emissions that the Western
| industrialized countries.
|
| That's true for new emissions, but remember that various
| greenhouse gases once emitted stay around in the atmosphere
| for a while.
|
| For CO2, a while is 300-1000 years. The US plus Europe
| emitted about 58% of the CO2 that is currently in the
| atmosphere.
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(page generated 2021-02-28 23:02 UTC)