Global warming...now re-branded as “climate change” - is a complex issue. Unfortunately it’s been dumbed down and politicized to the point that a real, honest conversation is all but impossible. Here is my very simple opinion: Is the earth warming? Yes. Will we look back on said warming in fifty or a hundred years as a catastrophic turn of events? No.
Funny coming from an island full of Trumptards. https://www.cnn.com/style/amp/staten-island-seawall-climate-crisis-design/index.html
Ok, let’s take global warming out of the equation. What should we do about using all these non-renewable products? Just ignore status quo to keep making big oil money? Or are you one of those fucks like my friends Wife that says, ‘that’s 100 years away, who gives a fuck about them?’
The US continues to cut emissions and move away from fossil fuels in a very real way. Why it isn't reported more I don't know. The real problem is India and China, who are building coal-fired power plants like it's going out of style. Nothing we do will stop that for the foreseeable future. Solar and wind are not sufficiently scalable to be macro solutions. Ironically, fracking/Nat Gas is a big reason we've been able to cut emissions. What do I think is the answer, long-term? There's only one IMO - nuclear. And that's where we should be headed in a much bigger way than we currently are. Unfortunately the environmental lobby - who claims to want to solve the problem - continues to cock-block nuclear wherever they can. Unfortunately, they are part of the problem.
Natural gas is a fossil fuel. We aren’t moving away from fossil fuels by using more and more natural gas...
Work in power industry, we need variable load units, Nuclear is base load, they go to 100% power and stay there. It's too much of a pain in the ass to lower load on them due to the xenon transients that occur, costs money to lower power. I now work for a coal plant, this past week when wind power has been non-existent our whole market profile was coal and natural gas. We were asked to go above our generators capacity several times throughout this week to let more peaking gas plants come online to keep from having blackouts.
Solar has plenty of uses but it's not going to be the primary way we provide power to the globe. It's not sufficiently scalable and wind is less scalable. Anyone who tells you we can do it all with solar and wind is living in fantasy land. Seems to me that Europe has been quite effective in implementing nuclear. I don't think there is any effective long-term solution that doesn't have nuclear as a big part of it.
I've got news for you bud - it will be a long, long time before we move completely away from fossil fuels. Natural Gas is far preferable to coal, etc. and is going to be a big part of the way forward. Some of you guys live in a fantasy land and are ill-informed, clearly.
I never said we were going away from fossil fuels anytime soon. I was just simply pointing out that you have a sophomoric understanding of fossil fuels if you didn’t know that natural gas is one of the three major ones.
I’m well aware that natural gas is a fossil fuel. My ten year-old knows that. Perhaps you should learn to read what’s written and resist the urge to interpolate. The issue was how do we reduce greenhouse emissions. The wording could have been more precise but the reason I used “ironically” is because nat gas is a fossil fuel.
Scotland just produced enough wind energy to power all its homes twice over Published Mon, Jul 15 2019 3:35 AM EDT Anmar Frangoul Key Points Wind power generation in Scotland had a strong first half of the year, according to new data published Monday. The Scottish government wants to produce half of the country’s energy consumption from renewables by 2030. Ashley Cooper/Construction Photography/Avalon | Hulton Archive | Getty Images Wind turbines in Scotland generated 9,831,320 megawatt hours between January and June 2019, WWF Scotland said Monday. Spoiler The numbers, which were supplied by WeatherEnergy, mean that Scottish wind generated enough electricity to power the equivalent of 4.47 million homes for six months. That is almost double the number of homes in Scotland, according to WWF Scotland. “Up and down the country, we are all benefiting from cleaner energy and so is the climate,” Robin Parker, climate and energy policy manager at WWF Scotland, said in a statement Monday. “These figures show harnessing Scotland’s plentiful onshore wind potential can provide clean, green electricity for millions of homes across not only Scotland, but England as well,” Parker added. By 2030, the Scottish government says it wants to produce half of the country’s energy consumption from renewables. It is also targeting an “almost completely” decarbonized energy system by 2050. As a whole, Europe is home to some of the world’s most ambitious wind energy projects. September 2018 saw the official opening of the Walney Extension Offshore Wind Farm in the Irish Sea. With a total capacity of 659 MW, it’s currently the world’s largest operational offshore wind farm and capable of powering nearly 600,000 homes in the U.K., according to Danish energy business Orsted.
But building infrastructure, teaching new technologies, and creating new industries will destroy the jobs of hard working american oil companies. Every time I read this thread, I remember how much I hate so many parts of this country
That would be an interesting study, I’m sure someone’s probably done it. Just looking at the amount of jobs created via “renewable” energy vs the amount lost on fossil fuel related jobs. I know wind turbine technicians are surging and pay well and being an electrician in the future will be highly sought after. But solar doesn’t create a ton of jobs per plant.
Battery pack plants should replace peaker plants, faster and more effective. Well improvement to HV transmission lines would be a start, enabling us to move around solar and wind energy better. Nuclear is the best option for base load but with its associated risks and waste disposal problems it doesn’t have the public support here.
My point was the # of jobs per facility A solar field can’t take that many individuals to run. Where as coal there is mining, a trucking/transport industry, and a coal plant operation portion.
Most of which will be automated soon. Why are we concerned about a few hundred jobs when talking about national energy issues?
How specifically is the coal industry moving to automation? I’m 100% for pushing towards renewables, but my original post was just stating that there are a significant amount of good paying jobs for rural Americans brought on by the fossil fuels industry. This has been a sector of Americans that’s been hit hard for decades. I know wind techs are popular and pay well but I’m not sure renewable energy would about the same number of jobs, it would be cool if there were others. Doesn’t mean we should stop progressing towards a greener future, just something I’ve thought about.
If elected president I will immediately put the largest wind farm in America within view of Mar A Lago
Google is your friend. It's literally been happening for decades. Caterpillar has self driving trucks now. Lots of new mining operations are surface/mountaintop mining done by machines. Even the underground mining is using a technique called longwall mining that heavily relies on automation. Machines are safer, more efficient and cheaper in the long run. Throw in Natural Gas bring so cheap, coal has to automate to stay competitive.
For sure, as with pretty much every industry there’s been improvements in efficiency with automation over the course of time. Some of what you described I hadn’t heard before so thanks for sharing. I didn’t mean to imply coal isn’t becoming more efficient but it seems to me coal still provides more jobs than a solar plant, not that I singled out coal originally. I just didn’t particularly get what the banks had a problem with.
Huge swathes of the Arctic on fire, ‘unprecedented’ satellite images show Earth’s boreal forests now burning at rate unseen in ‘at least 10,000 years’, scientists warn Spoiler The Independent Vast swathes of the Arctic are suffering from "unprecedented" wildfires, new satellite images have revealed. North of the Arctic circle, the high temperatures are facilitating enormous wildfires which are wreaking ecological destruction on a colossal scale. It comes after the world’s hottest June on record which has been followed by a devastating heatwave in the US, with Europe forecast for the same treatment later this week. Pierre Markuse, a satellite photography expert, posted images showing smoke billowing across massive areas of uninhabited and wild land. Fighting climate change with trees: The facts Show all 6 The pictures show forest fires and burning peat. They also reveal the extent of the damage the fires leave behind. In Alaska wildfires have already burned more than 1.6 million acres of land. Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast, said the amount of CO2 emitted by Arctic wildfires between 1 June and 21 July 2019 is around 100 megatonnes and is approaching the entire 2017 fossil fuel CO2 emissions of Belgium. “I think it’s fair to say July Arctic Circle wildfires are now at unprecedented levels, having surpassed previous highest #Copernicus GFAS estimated July total CO2 emission (2004/2005), & last month’s 50 megatonnes … and still increasing,” he tweeted. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has described the fires in the northern hemisphere as “unprecedented” and warned of the enormous impact they are having on CO2 levels contributing to the climate crisis. Wildfire in the Qeqqata Kommunia, Greenland (Pierre Markuse/Creative Commons) “Since the start of June, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (Cams) has tracked over 100 intense and long-lived wildfires in the Arctic Circle,” the WMO said in a statement. “In June alone, these fires emitted 50 megatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is equivalent to Sweden’s total annual emissions. This is more than was released by Arctic fires in the same month between 2010 and 2018 combined.” “Although wildfires are common in the northern hemisphere between May and October, the latitude and intensity of these fires, as well as the length of time that they have been burning for, has been particularly unusual,” the organisation said, quoting Dr Parrington. “The ongoing Arctic fires have been most severe in Alaska and Siberia, where some have been large enough to cover almost 100,000 football pitches, or the whole of Lanzarote. In Alberta, Canada, one fire is estimated to have been bigger than 300,000 pitches. In Alaska alone, Cams has registered almost 400 wildfires this year, with new ones igniting every day.” Satellite image processed by Pierre Markuse showing numerous wildfires burning in Russia just south of the Arctic Circle (Pierre Markuse/Creative Commons) The average June temperature in the region of Siberia where wildfires are raging was almost 10 degrees higher than the 1981 – 2010 long-term average. The WMO added: “The northern part of the world is warming faster than the planet as a whole. That heat is drying out forests and making them more susceptible to burn. A recent study found Earth’s boreal forests are now burning at a rate unseen in at least 10,000 years.”
That means by 2027, residential ratepayers would, overall, save an estimated $3.78 per month over what they pay now, according to the charts. “That is real savings to ratepayers,” Wilkin said.
US troops are increasingly falling to heatstroke during training as the military braces for rising temperatures David Matthews, New York Daily News July 24, 2019 at 08:18 AM The military has a climate change problem. As global temperatures rise, the number of heat-related illness diagnoses of active-duty service members is rising as well, according to military data. Statistics show a 60% increase of heatstroke or heat exhaustion cases between 2008 and 2018, from 1,766 to 2,792. Over that same stretch of time, at least 17 troops have died from heat-related complications during training exercises on bases in the U.S. According to the Defense Health Agency, 40% of the heat-related illnesses and deaths since 2014 occurred at five locations: Fort Benning in Georgia, Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Campbell in Kentucky, Fort Polk in Louisiana and Camp Lejeune, a Marine Corps installation in North Carolina. Two of the others in the top 10 are in South Carolina. As the temperatures rise in the U.S. they are rising even faster in regions the military is deployed, like the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. According to some former military members, troops need to train in the heat for exactly these reasons. "If you want to be prepared for a fight in the heat, you have to train in the heat under the same conditions you'll encounter," Augusto Giacoman, a former Army captain, told NBC News. The military's "warrior ethos" also leads to service members pushing past their limits in harsh conditions. "It doesn't matter that you're about ready to collapse, you don't let on," Joy Craig, a retired Marine Corps warrant officer and drill instructor, said. "You push through it." However, in order to get ahead of the problem and prevent death and injury in the future, the military is working toward a number of solutions. At Fort Benning, Maj. Meghan Galer, who wrote a white-paper on the military and climate change, created a heat center that trains medics how to treat heat illnesses in the field and trains field leaders in prevention tactics. She and her team are also working on a system that monitors vital signs and warns service members if heat stress is imminent. Military researchers are also developing new uniforms made from lightweight materials and different types of cooling vests, but those could be years away.
The Greenland ice sheet poured 197 billion tons of water into the North Atlantic in July alone https://www.washingtonpost.com/weat...h-atlantic-july-alone/?utm_term=.254c995cff0e
Does the Paris metro not have AC? Waiting for the metro would be literal hell, but all of metro cars that I’ve been on in Europe actually have AC equipped. It’s been a long ass time and only rode on paris’s a bit, though.
People's jobs don't matter in comparison to slowing climate change. Those in the fossil fuel industry can adapt or die.
Don't forget healthcare. All those doctors and nurses treating black lung, what's solar got? SPF 15?!? Exactly. Your move, solar.
Was curious about the heat/humidity differences. Only searched briefly, so this is just NYC, but yeah, it’s mother fucking hell while waiting: “...checked out the A train line at noon in Manhattan. The result was 122 degrees with humidity being factored into the temperature. The above-ground feels-like temperature at the same time was 93 - a difference of 29 degrees!” Probably accounts for half the weight I lost while living abroad