QUICK NEWS, September 19: All About Climate Change In 17 Short Answers; New Energy Ready To Step Up; How Old Energy Attacks Solar
All About Climate Change In 17 Short Answers Climate Change Is Complex. We’ve Got Answers to Your Questions.
Justin Gillis, September 19, 2017 (NY Times)
“…[Understanding the facts about global] warming can be daunting…[This easy-to-read piece boils it down to 17 short,] straightforward answers…[Both climate change and global warming] are accurate, but they mean different things…You can think of global warming as one type of climate change. The broader term covers changes beyond warmer temperatures, such as shifting rainfall patterns…President Trump has claimed that scientists stopped referring to global warming and started calling it climate change because ‘the weather has been so cold’ in winter. But the claim is false. Scientists have used both terms for decades…As of early 2017, the Earth had warmed by roughly 2 degrees Fahrenheit (more than 1 degree Celsius) since 1880, when records began at a global scale. The number may sound low, but as an average over the surface of an entire planet, it is actually high, which explains why much of the world’s land ice is starting to melt and the oceans are rising at an accelerating pace. If greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, scientists say, the global warming could ultimately exceed 8 degrees Fahrenheit, which would undermine the planet’s capacity to support a large human population…” click here for other 15 answers
New Energy Ready To Step Up Clean Energy Is Approaching a Tipping Point
Reed Landberg, September 19, 2017 (Bloomberg News)
“The cost of renewables is plunging faster than forecasters anticipated just a few years ago as technologies like gigantic wind turbines arrive on the market…[Bloomberg New Energy Finance] estimates that clean energy will reap 86 percent of the $10.2 trillion likely to be invested in power generation by 2040…[T]echnology that’s slashing the costs of wind and solar farms makes it inevitable that clean energy will become more economical than fossil fuels for utilities in many places...
The most visible advance is in the scale of wind turbines…When it started collecting data in earnest in 2004, BNEF already could see a trend toward bigger machines in the wind industry that deliver more spark to the grid. The scale of those turbines will grow…
The same process of producing more electricity for a lower cost is making photovoltaics cheaper…[Power generation fueled by natural gas and coal…[are increasingly unattractive because new wind and solar are becoming] cheaper than anything else…[A little further off,] it will be more costly to operate existing coal and gas plants than to take power from wind and solar…” click here for more
How Old Energy Attacks Solar The troubling 'tactics' politicians are using to attack rooftop solar
Greer Ryan, September 18, 2017 (CNBC)
“…[New figures show the U.S. solar power market experienced more record growth in the second quarter of 2017 and has been] 22 percent of new electric capacity this year…[But] politicians influenced by fossil fuel and utility companies are working feverishly to stifle renewable energy growth…[They have backed policies that] drive up the costs of residential solar and make it unaffordable for many Americans…Much of the impressive solar power growth in 2017 was led by large-scale and utility installations. Distributed solar – those smaller systems often put on rooftops and parking lots – only grew one percent in the second quarter…[This slowdown is problematic because distributed solar has the potential to supply electricity during grid outages resulting from extreme weather or other emergency situations…[so, on] top of reducing our fossil fuel dependence, rooftop solar helps to make our cities more resilient in the face of climate change…[And we can’t take utility-scale solar growth] for granted either…The federal government is considering a trade petition [moving forward under the guise of protecting U.S.-based solar panel manufacturers from international competition] that could, if [approve d by the president]…double the price of solar panels in the United States…[and force] the loss of one-third of domestic solar jobs…” click here for more
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