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Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades
41–50 of 166 posts
Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stop focusing on energy usage and start focusing on energy generation. It doesn't matter how much energy we consume if it comes from renewables.
What good does PV generated energy make if all that energy is used to generate heat and evaporating water?
Those are less of a problem. The heat was coming from the sun anyway. The water condenses out, so long as you haven't also increased the overall temperature in other ways.
The CO2, by contrast, is the gift that keeps on giving. It absorbs extra heat every day and hangs onto it. It doesn't condense or break down.
If that PV went to displacing sources of greenhouse gas, it would be a benefit. If all it's doing is running the plagiarism machine while we burn more and more "clean" coal, then we are in deep, deep trouble.
Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does matter because of the side effects (pollution, etc.). The environment and how it affects humanity is a complex system with many variables. Both generation and consumption are in there.
We're talking about global warming specifically here, though. Cars and planes should be a much bigger worry than AI power usage.
There's an easy 19th century solution to cars and planes - public transport. It could reduce the usage significantly, save people lots of time, reduce pollution, make people healthier through making the environment more walkable, reduce crime. We don't do it not because the technology isn't there, but because it's more profitable for people to induce consumption by planning our cities and suburbs around cars.
There's lots of rotting low hanging fruits ignored for decades because politicians are paid by the ladder-sellers.
Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades
#44Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of the cradle-to-grave studies I've seen about greenhouse gas emissions for renewables versus coal/oil still indicate massive improvements. This government meta study of 3,000 such studies puts PV solar at roughly 20x less emissions than coal. https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80580.pdf
Yes, but you're missing the point, I'm not debating that. Renewables aren't free, we should care about consumption just as much as production, and we don't know (yet) how to sustain the current consumption with renewables only, that includes being able to manufacture renewables.
That's fair and fwiw something I'm in firm agreement with you, but also just not what I took from your comment.
Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is why we have just paid billions of dollars to cancel a renewable power project. And are imposing extra fees on cars that can be driven on renewable energy. So, now I'm focused. I'm very focused.
OP did not say this is what we were doing. Said this is what we should do. What we are doing is attempting to hold back progress on generation while subsidizing demand, which is literally the absolute dumbest possible thing. Unless you are the fossil fuel industry. Then it’s great.
It's also great if boiling the planet is your actual goal.
I wouldn't have thought that it would be so popular, but apparently it is, and people can't get t done fast enough.
I'm kind of a misanthrope so philosophically I'm good with working on wiping ourselves out. The fact that we're doing it in the dumbest possible way should feel poetic. Instead it's just kind of embarrassing.
Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stop focusing on energy usage and start focusing on energy generation. It doesn't matter how much energy we consume if it comes from renewables.
What good does PV generated energy make if all that energy is used to generate heat and evaporating water?
That’s what solar energy does when it hits the ground or the oceans. It turns into heat or evaporated water. The latter is why it rains.
Harnessing it and piping it through extra steps only to end up as heat does nothing to the planet’s heat balance. All human energy use is tiny compared to total global solar flux. Like not even 1%.
The data center water issue is a municipal management problem. The problem is that evaporative cooling is cheaper. If data centers are using too much water to the point that it’s causing problems for homes or agriculture, it means they are not being charged enough for that water. Charge them more and they will suddenly shift toward more closed loop cooling.
Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does matter because for now renewables are manufactured mostly with coal and oil EDIT: I'm not a renewable skeptic, answers bellow
This doesn’t matter that much. Solar and batteries will last for decades with minimal maintenance and no input. Any kind of fossil fuel generation means constantly going out and digging up new oil sources, shipping them around the world, and then burning them. So you invest a lot of time & money into something that disappears immediately and also heats up the environment. Meanwhile, a solar panel just sits there for…
Imagine if all the vehicles that run of fossil fules is converted into EV. What are the incentives in place to properly recycle the batteries? Does a new battery technology go into production before the technology to recycle it is production grade/economically viable? What happens when we are getting like a million EV batteries, globally per day, to dispose off? What happens when these batteries use vastly different chemical composition (because they are from various stages of battery evolution) and need vastly different methods to process? What happens when these things pile up and poison the land? dumped in ocean or rivers? burned up releasing god-knows-what into air?
How long before the regulation (often times toothless) kicks in to handle these things?
I am all for getting rid of pollution, but there should be some caution in rushing onto new things, which is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place.
Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find that the per capita graph is more informative https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...
Why does per capita matter when it’s the total emissions that we actually care about? Wonderful, the United States uses more per capita than anyone else. That doesn’t mean anything in terms of total warming. Even if we cut to zero we still continue.
China should clearly just stop manufacturing the US’s entire way of life right now to bring those numbers down.
Re: Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who do you mean "we"? Look at the evolution of CO2 emisions in the past 40 years by region. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re...
Oh hell yeah, EU is doing something right! I fear to think how the US stats have changed. And China is… alarming.
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