161–170 of 696 posts
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I'm sorry, but why is this a surprise?
Besides my saying that it used to be contrary to Japanese cultural expectations (もったいない)?
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That’s just economics. That doesn’t excuse what the current admin has done in terms of prioritization.
That "just" is really doing a lot of heavy lifting. Economics is what makes this country work. If converting to renewables makes more money, that's what will happen and the people making the money will find a way to justify it politically.
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what I stated was "I wouldn't be surprised even billions die.", that implies that it's my understanding and opinion and I do not need to link a source for my own opinion.
If I stated that "I think everything will be completely fine", I would expect people to challenge me on that to provide some kind of evidence. Hyperbolic statements on both sides of the argument are not constructive.
Meanwhile governments are electing to either do nothing or actively make the problem worse (particularly in the case of the US — expanding fossil fuel extraction, pushing data center build out and attacking renewables like wind).
Data centers use no more than 1.5% of electricity globally[1], and a long LLM query uses only a little more than 5 minutes of general laptop use ~3x the energy of running an LED light for 5 minutes. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-a...
They also represent investment in economic growth that doesn't come from resource extraction or travel or manufacturing.
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Solar energy is the fastest growing source of energy in the US. That's because it's also the cheapest source of energy. So markets are working. https://abcnews.com/US/solar-generates-energy-coal-us-1st-ti... "Solar and storage provided 90% of all new power added in the U.S." is mind blowing. How about we give the US credit for this? Fossil fuel extraction is not the problem. The problem is fossil fuel usage. Given th…
What a weird, rose-tinted view of the US you have. Just because the markets are working and the US bungled its way into another war over oil doesn’t mean we should ignore the absolutely braindead political opposition to energy modernization.
But...
The political criticism in the US (and in Canada where I'm from) against fossil fuel extraction makes no sense. We should want that fossil fuels are extracted here. Not overseas. It's true some element of the "right" are ideologically driven here in the wrong direction but many in the "right" are also pragmatic. Instead of fighting we need to get to common ground and the way to get there is by market forces. Most would prefer the get solar energy if it's cheaper vs. more expensive fossil fuels. And certainly if all else was equal (panels made in the US, American jobs, whatnot). So you can take the adversarial route or you can take the pragmatic route and make real progress.
The other stupid political battle here is boycotting Tesla. How does that make sense? We "punish" Elon by using more fossil fuels.
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That "just" is really doing a lot of heavy lifting. Economics is what makes this country work. If converting to renewables makes more money, that's what will happen and the people making the money will find a way to justify it politically.
Economics only make the country work when societal costs are not externalised by those that cause them. Which they have been, always, by fossil fuel companies.
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El nino predictions are pretty spot on. They won't be able to tell you "There will be a storm on the 30th" but they will be able to tell you that you should expect flash floods next year. Unfortunately for where I'm at, the prediction due to el nino is more drought, which sucks because we are already desperately dry. Hopefully the following la nina year will bring us some moisture.
Predicting El Niño vs. La Niña vs. neutral: relatively reliable. Predicting how strong the El Niño will be: harder. Predicting exactly what it will do to rainfall, temperatures, storms, or snowfall: substantially less reliable.
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The US isn't expanding fossil fuel extraction, its quite the opposite. They're funding the modernization of existing plants in order to take older plants offline: June 2026: New coal-fired plants in Anchorage, Alaska, and Mt. Storm, West Virginia, would total 2.85 GW. They would be the first new U.S. coal plants to come online since 2013. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-announces-850m-moderniz... Meanwhile in Ch…
Could China and India get more electricity by investing the same amount in new solar production instead of coal?
To say they’re winning the race implies there even is a race.
It’s a super car vs a snail.
As someone who works in risk management, I think I have a hard time understanding how anyone can be so blase about climate change. Like, it truly takes a level of willful ignorance to have something so dire happening, and just choosing to either ignore it, or ignore the evidence for it. Like, even if you think the science isn't that accurate, the impacts , the massive potential harms, should outweigh the choice to ju…
this is perhaps the best thing written on the topic https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-jul-02-op-gilbe...
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So you’re saying we could significantly cut energy use globally by limiting data center build outs? 1.5% is a //huge// amount. If it was a “drop” in your bucket, it would only hold 67 more of those drops.
No, I'm not saying that and I don't think 1.5% is particularly large. Moreover many of these projects are built out with on site 0 carbon generation so they're in some ways a net benefit.