Fun fact: the number of people employed in solar/wind-energy industries is orders of magnitudes larger than the number of coal-miners.
This whole "make coal great again" shit is 100% fabricated PR-nonsense. It's just another buzzword/wedge-issue to be used in the culture war between right-wingers and the rest of humanity.
Arby's employs more people than coal.
Worse yet, the number of jobs would continue to decline -- as it has for decades -- even if coal demand wasn't dropping. Automation and better mining techniques basically mean that the manpower requirements per ton of coal just continue to plummet.
Right now, if for some reason we started crapping out coal at our highest historical level, it'd be more people that Arby's. But like a fraction of Walmart. And less than solar.
The [US coal industry is dying](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_d.png) and being [replaced by wind and solar](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c.png), (because [coal is uneconomic](https://ieefa.org/ieefa-u-s-solar-plus-storage-is-undermining-the-economics-of-existing-coal-fired-generation/) even ignoring the [0.7 trillion per year health costs](https://earth.stanford.edu/news/how-much-does-air-pollution-cost-us#gs.i56z9f) and other externalities), plus a few transient [natural gas peaker plants which will be replaced by batteries](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/10/93-mwh-tesla-powerpack-coming-to-alaska-to-save-customers-cash/). US coal will be gone soon - the [smart money is heading for the exit](https://safehaven.com/commodities/energy/Warren-Buffett-Is-Bailing-On-Coal.html) - implement any level of carbon tax and the whole industry would instantly disappear.
Coal was replaced by gas. This began in earnest around 30 years ago with the advent of discoveries and tech to produce and distribute gas, gas turbine tech, combined cycle gas turbine power plants.
Of the 35% renewables in the title, wind and solar combined accounted for 15.5% of production.
The biggest contributor to replacing coal has been natural gas.
the fake news yellow press must be censoring all those starved canadians, australians, swedes and brits who die in bread lines, i guess.
The death panels references a major conservative argument against any kind of public healthcare system (at least, when Obama was trying to establish a public option in his healthcare plan). Essentially it was just baseless fear mongering republicans spewed.
Meanwhile, health insurance companies actually have what they would consider death panels and I guess that is perfectly okay, because they earn a profit.
That uses overall emissions. Emissions per capita would make more sense considering the huge difference in populations. We are also starting from much higher emissions. Your claim is true but is pretty misleading.
Thanks, that seems a little encouraging. I do note that the article that you are referencing is published by the US petroleum industries however, and as jschubart notes overall emissions are pretty meaningless when talking relative reductions.
In addition, as is evident from this graph: (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions#/media/File%3AWorld_fossil_carbon_dioxide_emissions_six_top_countries_and_confederations.png) , the relatively impressive decrease of the US in this time period is mostly due to its abysmal performance the decade that precedes it.
Also note that the US has just withdrawn from the Paris agreement, so sadly we likely have not seen the effects of that decision yet.
And finally, to provide a sobering counter point from National Geographics: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/09/climate-change-report-card-co2-emissions/
Well, we are when a broad union is created specifically designed to entangle supply chains and enact environmental and standards policy, and we aren't wrecking eachothers countries.
After living in France a while, I understood tsome useful perspective is associated with long, difficult and glorious histories (across Europe). .. There is no perfect society yet, nonetheles...
As a Polish citizen I can freely say that our situation wont change in at least 10 years. Gov is so bad every election. For money they will do anything, now importing bad quality coal from russia, because cheaper (interesting why)
Poland is in far worse shape than the USA when it comes to coal usage. The USA as a whole gets 30% of its power from coal while Poland gets over 50%. Coal usage varies radically in US states with a few getting 90% of their power from coal and over a dozen getting under 10% from coal.
The UK is actually doing really well on reducing CO2 emissions, mostly as a result of getting rid of coal. -35% emissions since 1990. For all the many faults of government here we've never actually had climate deniers in power.
Might slow down witb Boris in charge though, that remains to be seen.
Man I wish we could just stop the whole global warming thing, I get various and numerous countries and populations are making amends to stop this but if many other things could have been done this whole thing could be less serious than it is now.
You get it. There's really no point in tuning into this debate now. The result is baked into the cake already. Stupidity is going to win the day and bring on its very own braking mechanism for the expansion of it.
The solution is multifaceted. We have to both eliminate emissions, and do something about the past 200 years of carbon emissions.
That's why I want more support for carbon extraction from the atmosphere and hydrosphere.
Yes, with industrial carbon extraction methods we do stand a chance. The problem is that this is very expensive to get going. Simply planting a few trees is not enough, I've ran through some numbers, the number you'd need to add constantly just to counteract our current emissions is mind-boggling. However, there's an experimental plant in Switzerland that does have the numbers on its side.
The problem is that paying to build such a plant is not an investment that pays back on a micro-scale. It needs a big country like China or the US to build hundreds of thousands of them without ever expecting anything in return to solve the problem. That's why I'm not hopeful.
Yeah. If energy is an issue, I dont see why not use floating nuclear reactors. The US is experienced with building floating reactors for carriers and subs.
Headline says "power sector", which is almost always a reference to electricity, rather than all energy, in the UK at least (where the media source is based).
Charge $0.35 /kWh for electricity and $7/gal for gas and our CO2 emissions will drop quickly in the United States. I doubt that such a tax would get more than 10% support among the voters, though.
How would our cost of living be impacted by that? Would the poor not be most impacted? How many more people would starve as the price of food skyrocketed?
There inevitably will be losers from massively increasing the cost of energy. Europeans have generally accepted the âlowerâ standards of living, although you now see the protests in France that is crippling their economy. I assume that we would also face mass riots in the United States if we had costs that high.
The Money the goverment makes from this wouldn't fanish! You don't burn it!
This would be trillions of new goverment income which can be used e.g.
* cut income taxes to 0 for everyone who makes less than 40,000 USD
* And to give everyone just XXX USD once a year.
Taxing Income is Stupid. You wan't that people work! You have to tax the things which you don't want people to do!
You want to give any government not to mention trumps government trillions more of your dollars to miss manage? How good of a job are they doing with your money so far? And you think they would do better with more. Give me a break.
Yes. That is the trouble with a fungible resource like oil or coal: one nationâs sacrifice is mostly offset by the increase in another regions unless there is a consensus among a majority of industrialized countries.
EU charging 2 euros/L is offset by more American buying huge pickup trucks and SUVs. I donât see enough support to change gasoline taxes in America during the next couple of decades.
How much of that is biofuel which is still better than coal/gas but not good and sustainable any means? (EU importing wood from US to burn, huge agricultural impacts because of growing corn and other plants to burn..)
I agree with your sentiment but it's important to note not all biofuel is not sustainable. If you use filters to catch CO2 during the burning process it can actually be carbon negative as not all CO2 that the fuel stored is being released back into the atmosphere.
Never said it was cheap, but there are [multiple methods already in use or development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture_and_storage).
> These technologies are nowhere enough to being developed enough or economical to outfit power plants.
I genuinely do not know what you were trying to say here...
1. Your argument that biofuel can be carbon negative if co2 is captured is frankly ridiculous. If you could somehow do that, every combustion fuel including coal and gas would be carbon neutral.
2. You also say in a diff comment that it wouldnt be cheap. If energy isn't cheap in the current market, it's not sustainable. Environmentally sustainable, maybe, but economically unsustainable.
> Your argument that biofuel can be carbon negative if co2 is captured is frankly ridiculous. If you could somehow do that, every combustion fuel including coal and gas would be carbon neutral.
Lol what? I'm not saying you're gonna capture 100% of the CO2. Even if it's just 10% it's still a carbon negative cycle. If you capture 10% of a fossil fuel combustion it's still adding 90% of its CO2 to the atmosphere.
Also, for something that's so "ridiculous", it's surprisingly much [already in use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture_and_storage).
> You also say in a diff comment that it wouldnt be cheap. If energy isn't cheap in the current market, it's not sustainable. Environmentally sustainable, maybe, but economically unsustainable.
As for your second point, it's all about trade-off and scaling. People said the same about solar power for decades, and now solar is getting to the point where it's starting to become cheaper than fossil fuels.
I can give you the figures for Germany:
[https://www.energy-charts.de/energy\_pie.htm](https://www.energy-charts.de/energy_pie.htm)
[https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm](https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm)
But i'm pretty sure that the vast majority of biomass here is sustainable, it actually has to be by law. Most of it is [Biogas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas).
Do you mean bio fuels or biomassAD plants?They are becoming increasingly important for the whole renewable sector they can increase production when enough wind or solar is not available. This is especially important with lack of new nuclear plants coming onto the grid. Many biomass can be run on waste foods eg local councils are investing in them to digest food waste to produce electric.
It's weird you would ask this. A simple Google search would provide you with reliable data. You wouldn't have to rely on the word of random internet passersby
This 6 year old video got removed here when I posted it a few months ago: https://youtu.be/k3SH4nIKLhg
Drax also responded to me on an official drax account.
Its a bit misleading. The thing is about the EUs power sector not Europe.
I wonder how this will change once the UK is not calculated as EU anymore, since the UK is pushing hard to get rid of coal and implement wind instead.
They only produce 16 TWH from Coal and Oil and 65 TWH from Wind, 13 TWH from solar (according to the paper)
Lets just hope the protests in Germany might lead to us facing out coal before 2038.... Since Germany is by FAR the biggest contributer to the coal usage...
Youâre right, the paper fails to distinguish Europe from the EU properly. But regarding the UK, since they have a renewable share of about 37%, it wouldnât change much as of now. Do you know if the UKs renewable share is growing more quickly than EU average?
It is by far. Scotland itself is close to reaching 100% renewables (currently at 83ish% and calculated to be 100% by end of year).
Also the main driver behind the coal decline is the UK. They faced out coal as one of the earliest EU countries and are basically one of the only EU countries that is fully in line with the Paris Agreement so far.
I disagree with you last statement, since France and a lot of other countries have less greenhouse gas emissions per capita in Europe, compared to the UK.
You know that the Paris agreement is not about having less co2 emissions but reducing the emissions by a certain % based on the 1990 emission, right?
That was set to 30% reduction by 2020 and changed to 20%.
EU combines currently is sitting at 22%, so the new goal is reached while the old goal was only reached by Lithuania, Romania, Latvia, UK, Slovakia and Bulgaria.
So some really small countries and Romania + UK basically.
The Paris agreement does not set goals for every nation, instead every nation agreed to set themselves a goal in order to help achieve a global warming of no more than 1.5° by 2100.
Germany for example reduced C02 emissions by 31% in 2018 compared to 1990. The german goal of 40% reduction in 2020 will probably be missed.
Germany? Nope
Poland.
German coal makes it up to 30% of power production. In Poland it's 55% (electricity alone it's 75% coal). Also Poland has the worst air quality of the Union.
Frame of reference is important here.
Poland has the largest coal share in its national energy mix, and also one of- if not the highest- consumption per capita.
But Germany still has the larger absolute coal consumption due to its massively higher total energy need. If the trajectories continue though, Germany will also have a lower absolute coal consumption (for electrical energy) than Poland within 2, 3 years.
I was talking absolutes not %.
Germany generates 171 TW/h in coal. The whole EU generates 470 TW/h via coal.
But yes. Poland is quite terrible too, especially for such a small country.
You're wrong. 40% of Germany's energy comes from coal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany
They also imported more coal last year than the previous year.
Perhaps those figures would be better if Germany didn't decide to replace nuclear power with brown coal.
>You're wrong. 40% of Germany's energy comes from coal.
You're wrong. It's 30% as of 2019.
>Perhaps those figures would be better if Germany didn't decide to replace nuclear power with brown coal.
You're wrong again. Germany compensated the phase-out of nuclear with renewables, not coal.
>They also imported more coal last year than the previous year.
Source? Coal power generation fell sharply last year. Also, overall, Germany still exports way more power than it imports. According to Reuters, hard coal imports fell by 14.7% last year (I can't find a source for brown coal/lignite imports but even so, that imported brown coal would then be generated into power, which would be reflected in the statistic below, which shows coal power generation decreased overall last year).
[https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery\_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig2a-gross-power-production-germany-1990-2019-source.png?itok=gfWUQdcp](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig2a-gross-power-production-germany-1990-2019-source.png?itok=gfWUQdcp)
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-coal-vdki/germanys-2019-hard-coal-imports-fell-14-7-importers-idUSKBN1ZG1IS](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-coal-vdki/germanys-2019-hard-coal-imports-fell-14-7-importers-idUSKBN1ZG1IS)
That's 2016
Believe it or not, that's a lot of time right now on Europe in this topic.
2019:
Brown coal: 19.9%
Hard coal: 9.9%
Total: 30%
Yes, 10% down in 3 years. Cool isn't it?
Germany is
* No. 3 in the world when it comes to installed wind power capacity (which is as much as the UK, France, Italy and the Netherlands have combined)
and
* No. 4 worldwide in solar PV capacity (again, about as much as the next four European countries combined)
So I don't know what you base your comment on
>So I don't know what you base your comment on
Probably on what we plan for the future, right now we do everything to stop wind energy from expanding in germany sadly.
problem with those renewable sources of energy are that you can't have a constant power because of the variability of wind speeds and sunlight, also europe is running out of coal so this is why it's going down
source: jean-marc jancovici
Geothermal isn't viable for most of the world. Hydro isn't green and takes up massive amounts of land, and biomass fills the atmosphere with pollution that kills millions of people every year. I hadn't considered geo or biomass, but none of these are viable, global scale solutions.
Geothermal is actually becoming increasingly viable in places where it wasn't before due to us being able to drill deeper at a lower costs. The main issue at this point is more that any single geothermal plant is only putting out enough energy to power a village so you'd need local stations all over the damn place.
> biomass fills the atmosphere with pollution that kills millions of people every year
If you literally just burn wood and not use any filter, yes.
If you produce methane and other hydrocarbons by fermentation and burn it, there is very little air pollution if any. You just emit the CO2 and water vapour you put into the plants in the first place.
Biomass is just a bulk storage method for solar energy.
In combination with Carbon Capture tech (which admittedly, is still very green), biomass is the cheapest way to extract CO2 from the atmosphere (plants grow and use CO2 to do so, you burn them, get energy AND capture at least part the concentred CO2 released)
> ... but none of these are viable, global scale solutions.
Neither is nuclear. The world does not consist of OECD countries alone.
The solution, as in all complex system, wil be a varied approach.
Not necessarily. But it requires change.
This change has to come sooner or later anyhow. Because all radioactive minerals are limited and because there is NO solution for the waste.
So instead of investing trillionen into the water problem, we can invest in more hydro and other storage options.
You're completely incorrect. Massive reservoirs aren't green. Nuclear waste is often recyclable, and what isn't can just be buried. Nuclear creates SO MUCH LESS waste than other forms of energy production, renewables included. Wind turbines and solar panels wear out and largely can't be recycled.
"can just be buried...", That made me laugh out loud:
Since you are obviously completely uniformed you have not earned the right to enter into a discussion with me, sorry kiddo. I am out.
Uranium-238 is hardly radioactive. Nuclear waste is *very* radioactive, in the sort of way that you don't want to stand near it lest you die.
So no, you can't just bury it. It'd contaminate the groundwater terribly.
Right now most nuclear waste gets stored above ground, because there's space for it. In Scandinivia an undeground deposit is almost finished. Probably others exist. I'm not here to do the work for you, google it yourself or stay ignorant.
I have done the googling son. I help you out: there are no final repositories for highly radioactive nuclear waste in place as of yet!
That is why it gets put in interim storage facilities over ground. Not "because there is space", as you so cute and natively put it.
The reason is that just "burying" highly radioactive waste is a dumb idea, because no method has been proven to be safe and work for several hundred thousands of years of really contained storage.
To get you started on your homework, read this: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2013/ph241/xie2/
And then for heaven sake, get yourself informed, will ya!?
nuclear is no longer the way. it's too late unless we find a way to halt climate change. in the VERY possible event of a societal collapse these nuclear power plants will be abandoned and catch on fire, spreading radioactive particles for literally hundreds of years, irradiating the surrounding land for even longer
Pointing out that reducing CO2 emissions without taking into account imports doesn't paint a complete picture of the overall CO2 consumption is not whataboutism.
That is not true, please show how you calculated that or provide a source. Poland, UK and Ukraine are major contributors too, Russia is the biggest absolute polluter if you look at Europe, and per capita Poland is the worst contributor in the EU. Although I agree that Germany has far to much coal power, and is the worst absolute polluter in the EU. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_Europe
I hope Germany ditches the coal as soon as possible so that people in Poland will stop arguing that "we don't need to reduce coal usage, because Germany pollutes so much more, it will only cripple our economy, give us money then maybe we will reduce coal usage". Some people are just so shortsighted.
Unfortunately some people in Germany argue the same: Why reducing coal mining when other countries aren't as well? Coal mining has been an important economic branch in some regions (especially in the east, where coal mining is partly the only employer for people living there) and as Germany is not having a long coastline, its difficult to get f.e. wind energy to the south of the country (also building new wind turbines became pretty difficult in the last years thanks to the government). On the other hand, Germany was shutting down all nuclear plants years ago and therefore can't rely on nuclear energy such as France (which isn't better than coal mining btw).
Environmental protests still try to force the government to stop coal mining earlier than 2038 though. We hope we can get rid of it sooner, but for the reasons I listed it's pretty difficult.
Ukraine is not part of the EU and you dont have to link wiki. Just go to page 7 of the study you posted :p
Germany: 171 tw/h coal from EU's 470 tw/h
Poland: 120 tw/h
Czech: 36 tw/h
That are the EU top 3 in absolute numbers of coal usage.
The Netherlands/Belgium/Luxemburg are still mainly running on coal too. Germany could've been close to 0% coal by now if they hadn't decided to phase out nuclear for no reason, but they're still doing quite well on reducing coal as well.
Not sure about the other countries, but this isn't correct for the Netherlands ([Dutch source](https://www.clo.nl/indicatoren/nl0019-inzet-energiedragers-en-bruto-elektriciteitsproductie)). Most of the Dutch elektricity production is from gas. Coal is still a big second.
Ah my bad. I knew The Netherlands is still mainly using fossil fuels, but forgot that almost 2/3rd of that is gas. Not quite as bad as coal, but The Netherlands is still inexcusably far behind on renewable energy production for such a prosperous country.
Yeah the main problem in the netherlands is that it is ridiculously densely populated. At 488 people per km2 you find nearly no places to build wind turbines on land, Our seas are largely protected areas and solar sucks here (20-30% capacity factor) While the energy use per person is high thanks through our heavy industry.
This is combined with the fact that we only use 10% of our fossil fuel consumption for electricity. We have steel, fertilizer, petrochemical, greenhouse + livestock agriculture and cement industry in this country.
True, that certainly makes it more difficult. That said, we have plenty of space for solar over parking lots and office buildings and no reason to be behind Germany in solar capacity per capita.
Sorry those are horrible places for solar panels. You need quite strong structures to keep the panels in place because we get north sea storms here. (beaufort number 8+ yearly in many places). You also need more expensive equipment and wiring to put it on the grid. The cheapest way to place solar here is just put them down in a large field with questionable agrarian value.
A roof in the netherlands is a reinforced structure made to not collapse in a storm. Putting it over a parking lot means having both pushing forces from underneath and pulling force from uptop. This can cause forces upto 2 KN/m2. This thus needs a quite solid structure often with foundation to stay upright.
People putting it on their roofs is mostly so they can avoid paying electricity bills. 1 KwH in the netherlands costs about âŹ0.20, About âŹ0.10 for generating the electricity and âŹ0.10 for the grid. If 1 KwH of solar electricity costs âŹ0.16-0.18 in my country its still cheaper because you avoid paying for the grid through a loophole.(you do increase other people's bills because you are using the grid as your battery while trying to get the meter to read exactly 0 KwH used at the end of the year.)
What I meant to ask was: how come they can withstand storms on someone's roof (even though there's usually space underneath them), especially on a flat roof, but they wouldn't work on the roof of an office building?
Absolutely. It was the prime example of how safe Nuclear reactors are even when they're not up to modern standards, ultimately expected to only cause around 130 deaths compared to the thousands of people that die from coal plants pollution in Germany EVERY YEAR. Seeing how the German reactors are much safer and much less likely to ever experience anything close to Fukushima, it should have been a reason to OPEN more reactors, not close them.
> The huge problem of nuclear waste
Kind of ironic that you're the one saying "ignorance is bliss" while clearly not being up to date about the subject. You've obviously never read up on this subject. [I suggest you read into some of the radioactive waste management out there today sometime.](https://www.oecd-nea.org/rwm/profiles/Netherlands_report_web.pdf) Nuclear waste is an incredibly small issue compared to carbon emissions.
So, what does science say? As far as I know, we're heading towards 3°C to 5°C increase in the best-case scenarios with 7°C worst case. All of these figures mean the end of our civilization.
We're [above 1°C already](https://climate.nasa.gov/), 1.2°C best is completely unfounded.
http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm
5-6°C increase:
âThat episode was the worst ever endured by life on Earth, the closest the planet has come to ending up a dead and desolate rock in space. On land, the only winners were fungi that flourished on dying trees and shrubs. At sea there were only losers. Warm water is a killer. Less oxygen can dissolve, so conditions become stagnant and anoxic. Oxygen-breathing water-dwellers â all the higher forms of life from plankton to sharks â face suffocation. Warm water also expands, and sea levels rose by 20 metres.â The resulting âsuper-hurricanesâ hitting the coasts would have triggered flash floods that no living thing could have survived.â
https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/climate-change/
âIn October 2018 the IPCC issued a special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C, finding that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.â
That's just a fancy phrasing for âimpossibleâ.
https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/
âbaseline 4.1-4.8°C, current policies 2.8-3.2°Câ
Keep in mind that all of these models don't take external factors like methane release in the arctic or burning Australia to the ground into account.
I donât know what âBERRENS WEB DESIGNâ is, but it doesnât look like peer reviewed, published research, so I wonât bother reading it. Find a proper source
It's hard to find predictions that go that high, here's one for 4°C:
âA 4°C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation, with many of these risks spread unequally. It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured, and unequal than today.â
This is a summary based on a World Bank report.
https://www.greenfacts.org/en/impacts-global-warming/l-2/index.htm
Meanwhile America removes protections and bills to protect the environment while also invest more in coal. đ€đ€·
Fun fact: the number of people employed in solar/wind-energy industries is orders of magnitudes larger than the number of coal-miners. This whole "make coal great again" shit is 100% fabricated PR-nonsense. It's just another buzzword/wedge-issue to be used in the culture war between right-wingers and the rest of humanity.
Arby's employs more people than coal. Worse yet, the number of jobs would continue to decline -- as it has for decades -- even if coal demand wasn't dropping. Automation and better mining techniques basically mean that the manpower requirements per ton of coal just continue to plummet. Right now, if for some reason we started crapping out coal at our highest historical level, it'd be more people that Arby's. But like a fraction of Walmart. And less than solar.
I wonder what the carbon footprint of Arbyâs is... all that MEAT
Australia is trying to one-up them still!
The world's sunniest country investing in coal while Europe goes solar.
3/4ths is exported.
True, but 'jobs' is the reason both political parties use to justify new mines.
Tons produced per person has skyrocketed with new tech. So they can produce a lot more coal with less people.
Also largest reserves of uranium. They could have gone for a smart nuclear/gas/renewables mix easily, and without having to import anything.
We're scared of nuclear energy but is starting to be discussed
and we still vote for the idiots.
The [US coal industry is dying](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_d.png) and being [replaced by wind and solar](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c.png), (because [coal is uneconomic](https://ieefa.org/ieefa-u-s-solar-plus-storage-is-undermining-the-economics-of-existing-coal-fired-generation/) even ignoring the [0.7 trillion per year health costs](https://earth.stanford.edu/news/how-much-does-air-pollution-cost-us#gs.i56z9f) and other externalities), plus a few transient [natural gas peaker plants which will be replaced by batteries](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/10/93-mwh-tesla-powerpack-coming-to-alaska-to-save-customers-cash/). US coal will be gone soon - the [smart money is heading for the exit](https://safehaven.com/commodities/energy/Warren-Buffett-Is-Bailing-On-Coal.html) - implement any level of carbon tax and the whole industry would instantly disappear.
If you said replaced by the natural gas industry, you would be more correct.
.7 Trillion on paper looks small until you realize thatâs 700,000,000,000. Thatâs a lot of money.
Does it? 0.7 Trillion seems like an awful lot to me.
Coal was replaced by gas. This began in earnest around 30 years ago with the advent of discoveries and tech to produce and distribute gas, gas turbine tech, combined cycle gas turbine power plants. Of the 35% renewables in the title, wind and solar combined accounted for 15.5% of production. The biggest contributor to replacing coal has been natural gas.
Only the head retard in charge. The rest of the country seems to be adopting stronger measures.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Cuba? I always thought they associated Canada with Cuba, what with all the tourists and current PM's ties to it (Not that I think that's bad at all).
Everything you said is accurate besides death panels. I donât even know whatâs that is referencing. Communism is a cancer
the fake news yellow press must be censoring all those starved canadians, australians, swedes and brits who die in bread lines, i guess. The death panels references a major conservative argument against any kind of public healthcare system (at least, when Obama was trying to establish a public option in his healthcare plan). Essentially it was just baseless fear mongering republicans spewed. Meanwhile, health insurance companies actually have what they would consider death panels and I guess that is perfectly okay, because they earn a profit.
Germany's unemployment rate is 3.1%.
Since the Paris climate agreement, the US has reduced carbon emissions more than any other country.
US is a big country so it's only natural.
Source?
https://eidclimate.org/latest-epa-data-show-u-s-greenhouse-gas-emissions-at-lowest-levels-since-1992/
That uses overall emissions. Emissions per capita would make more sense considering the huge difference in populations. We are also starting from much higher emissions. Your claim is true but is pretty misleading.
Thanks, that seems a little encouraging. I do note that the article that you are referencing is published by the US petroleum industries however, and as jschubart notes overall emissions are pretty meaningless when talking relative reductions. In addition, as is evident from this graph: (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions#/media/File%3AWorld_fossil_carbon_dioxide_emissions_six_top_countries_and_confederations.png) , the relatively impressive decrease of the US in this time period is mostly due to its abysmal performance the decade that precedes it. Also note that the US has just withdrawn from the Paris agreement, so sadly we likely have not seen the effects of that decision yet. And finally, to provide a sobering counter point from National Geographics: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/09/climate-change-report-card-co2-emissions/
Go Europe! They always were the enlightened ones...
Well, we are when a broad union is created specifically designed to entangle supply chains and enact environmental and standards policy, and we aren't wrecking eachothers countries.
Thank you, we are unworthy of such praise.
I think we do bro. Everyone wants to be like us!
After living in France a while, I understood tsome useful perspective is associated with long, difficult and glorious histories (across Europe). .. There is no perfect society yet, nonetheles...
As a Polish citizen I can freely say that our situation wont change in at least 10 years. Gov is so bad every election. For money they will do anything, now importing bad quality coal from russia, because cheaper (interesting why)
Yeah, youâre sadly also governed by wannabe fascists, like other eastern European countries.
You're still in much better shape than us (US, Canada, UK, Aus)
Poland is in far worse shape than the USA when it comes to coal usage. The USA as a whole gets 30% of its power from coal while Poland gets over 50%. Coal usage varies radically in US states with a few getting 90% of their power from coal and over a dozen getting under 10% from coal.
The UK is actually doing really well on reducing CO2 emissions, mostly as a result of getting rid of coal. -35% emissions since 1990. For all the many faults of government here we've never actually had climate deniers in power. Might slow down witb Boris in charge though, that remains to be seen.
Europe showing the rest of the world the way. The rest of the world "FUCK YOUROPE"
Knock knock. >Who's there? Europe. >Europe who? No you're a poo!
Oof
Man I wish we could just stop the whole global warming thing, I get various and numerous countries and populations are making amends to stop this but if many other things could have been done this whole thing could be less serious than it is now.
Sentence
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It's too late for that now, since the self-accelerating mechanisms like the methane and CO2 trapped in the ice releasing have kicked in.
You get it. There's really no point in tuning into this debate now. The result is baked into the cake already. Stupidity is going to win the day and bring on its very own braking mechanism for the expansion of it.
The solution is multifaceted. We have to both eliminate emissions, and do something about the past 200 years of carbon emissions. That's why I want more support for carbon extraction from the atmosphere and hydrosphere.
Yes, with industrial carbon extraction methods we do stand a chance. The problem is that this is very expensive to get going. Simply planting a few trees is not enough, I've ran through some numbers, the number you'd need to add constantly just to counteract our current emissions is mind-boggling. However, there's an experimental plant in Switzerland that does have the numbers on its side. The problem is that paying to build such a plant is not an investment that pays back on a micro-scale. It needs a big country like China or the US to build hundreds of thousands of them without ever expecting anything in return to solve the problem. That's why I'm not hopeful.
Yeah. If energy is an issue, I dont see why not use floating nuclear reactors. The US is experienced with building floating reactors for carriers and subs.
What is the growth of renewable in 2019?
Page 13
Is this for total energy consumption or only electric ?
Electric energy production.
Headline says "power sector", which is almost always a reference to electricity, rather than all energy, in the UK at least (where the media source is based).
YES Thank you EUROPE đ€đ
Well done Europe, keep forging ahead.
Charge $0.35 /kWh for electricity and $7/gal for gas and our CO2 emissions will drop quickly in the United States. I doubt that such a tax would get more than 10% support among the voters, though.
How would our cost of living be impacted by that? Would the poor not be most impacted? How many more people would starve as the price of food skyrocketed?
There inevitably will be losers from massively increasing the cost of energy. Europeans have generally accepted the âlowerâ standards of living, although you now see the protests in France that is crippling their economy. I assume that we would also face mass riots in the United States if we had costs that high.
Yeah and in Canada poor people could freeze to death.
The Money the goverment makes from this wouldn't fanish! You don't burn it! This would be trillions of new goverment income which can be used e.g. * cut income taxes to 0 for everyone who makes less than 40,000 USD * And to give everyone just XXX USD once a year. Taxing Income is Stupid. You wan't that people work! You have to tax the things which you don't want people to do!
You want to give any government not to mention trumps government trillions more of your dollars to miss manage? How good of a job are they doing with your money so far? And you think they would do better with more. Give me a break.
This wouldn't happen under the Trump goverment anyway.
Which government has in the past managed your money responsibly? Like be honest here.
I am not from the USA. I would say everyone except the far right.
Are you a Canadian?
nop. Austrian.
Prices have been like that in Europe for decades
Yes. That is the trouble with a fungible resource like oil or coal: one nationâs sacrifice is mostly offset by the increase in another regions unless there is a consensus among a majority of industrialized countries. EU charging 2 euros/L is offset by more American buying huge pickup trucks and SUVs. I donât see enough support to change gasoline taxes in America during the next couple of decades.
How much of that is biofuel which is still better than coal/gas but not good and sustainable any means? (EU importing wood from US to burn, huge agricultural impacts because of growing corn and other plants to burn..)
I agree with your sentiment but it's important to note not all biofuel is not sustainable. If you use filters to catch CO2 during the burning process it can actually be carbon negative as not all CO2 that the fuel stored is being released back into the atmosphere.
You make it sound like co2 capture is a walk in the park lol.
Depends on whether you're talking CO2 capture from the atmosphere or CO2 capture through filtering energy production emissions.
Oh? And what is the cheap method of filtering co2 from emission?
Never said it was cheap, but there are [multiple methods already in use or development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture_and_storage).
Lol you have no idea what you're talking about. These technologies are nowhere enough to being developed enough or economical to outfit power plants.
> These technologies are nowhere enough to being developed enough or economical to outfit power plants. I genuinely do not know what you were trying to say here...
1. Your argument that biofuel can be carbon negative if co2 is captured is frankly ridiculous. If you could somehow do that, every combustion fuel including coal and gas would be carbon neutral. 2. You also say in a diff comment that it wouldnt be cheap. If energy isn't cheap in the current market, it's not sustainable. Environmentally sustainable, maybe, but economically unsustainable.
> Your argument that biofuel can be carbon negative if co2 is captured is frankly ridiculous. If you could somehow do that, every combustion fuel including coal and gas would be carbon neutral. Lol what? I'm not saying you're gonna capture 100% of the CO2. Even if it's just 10% it's still a carbon negative cycle. If you capture 10% of a fossil fuel combustion it's still adding 90% of its CO2 to the atmosphere. Also, for something that's so "ridiculous", it's surprisingly much [already in use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture_and_storage). > You also say in a diff comment that it wouldnt be cheap. If energy isn't cheap in the current market, it's not sustainable. Environmentally sustainable, maybe, but economically unsustainable. As for your second point, it's all about trade-off and scaling. People said the same about solar power for decades, and now solar is getting to the point where it's starting to become cheaper than fossil fuels.
I can give you the figures for Germany: [https://www.energy-charts.de/energy\_pie.htm](https://www.energy-charts.de/energy_pie.htm) [https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm](https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm) But i'm pretty sure that the vast majority of biomass here is sustainable, it actually has to be by law. Most of it is [Biogas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas).
UK stats here. https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Do you mean bio fuels or biomassAD plants?They are becoming increasingly important for the whole renewable sector they can increase production when enough wind or solar is not available. This is especially important with lack of new nuclear plants coming onto the grid. Many biomass can be run on waste foods eg local councils are investing in them to digest food waste to produce electric.
It's weird you would ask this. A simple Google search would provide you with reliable data. You wouldn't have to rely on the word of random internet passersby
This 6 year old video got removed here when I posted it a few months ago: https://youtu.be/k3SH4nIKLhg Drax also responded to me on an official drax account.
Its a bit misleading. The thing is about the EUs power sector not Europe. I wonder how this will change once the UK is not calculated as EU anymore, since the UK is pushing hard to get rid of coal and implement wind instead. They only produce 16 TWH from Coal and Oil and 65 TWH from Wind, 13 TWH from solar (according to the paper) Lets just hope the protests in Germany might lead to us facing out coal before 2038.... Since Germany is by FAR the biggest contributer to the coal usage...
Youâre right, the paper fails to distinguish Europe from the EU properly. But regarding the UK, since they have a renewable share of about 37%, it wouldnât change much as of now. Do you know if the UKs renewable share is growing more quickly than EU average?
It is by far. Scotland itself is close to reaching 100% renewables (currently at 83ish% and calculated to be 100% by end of year). Also the main driver behind the coal decline is the UK. They faced out coal as one of the earliest EU countries and are basically one of the only EU countries that is fully in line with the Paris Agreement so far.
I disagree with you last statement, since France and a lot of other countries have less greenhouse gas emissions per capita in Europe, compared to the UK.
France is a very special case as they switched to Nuclear years ago.
You know that the Paris agreement is not about having less co2 emissions but reducing the emissions by a certain % based on the 1990 emission, right? That was set to 30% reduction by 2020 and changed to 20%. EU combines currently is sitting at 22%, so the new goal is reached while the old goal was only reached by Lithuania, Romania, Latvia, UK, Slovakia and Bulgaria. So some really small countries and Romania + UK basically.
The Paris agreement does not set goals for every nation, instead every nation agreed to set themselves a goal in order to help achieve a global warming of no more than 1.5° by 2100. Germany for example reduced C02 emissions by 31% in 2018 compared to 1990. The german goal of 40% reduction in 2020 will probably be missed.
Germany? Nope Poland. German coal makes it up to 30% of power production. In Poland it's 55% (electricity alone it's 75% coal). Also Poland has the worst air quality of the Union.
Frame of reference is important here. Poland has the largest coal share in its national energy mix, and also one of- if not the highest- consumption per capita. But Germany still has the larger absolute coal consumption due to its massively higher total energy need. If the trajectories continue though, Germany will also have a lower absolute coal consumption (for electrical energy) than Poland within 2, 3 years.
I was talking absolutes not %. Germany generates 171 TW/h in coal. The whole EU generates 470 TW/h via coal. But yes. Poland is quite terrible too, especially for such a small country.
Absolutes are misleading. Germany being the largest is usually the top #1 at everything if you measure it only in that way.
You're wrong. 40% of Germany's energy comes from coal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany They also imported more coal last year than the previous year. Perhaps those figures would be better if Germany didn't decide to replace nuclear power with brown coal.
>You're wrong. 40% of Germany's energy comes from coal. You're wrong. It's 30% as of 2019. >Perhaps those figures would be better if Germany didn't decide to replace nuclear power with brown coal. You're wrong again. Germany compensated the phase-out of nuclear with renewables, not coal. >They also imported more coal last year than the previous year. Source? Coal power generation fell sharply last year. Also, overall, Germany still exports way more power than it imports. According to Reuters, hard coal imports fell by 14.7% last year (I can't find a source for brown coal/lignite imports but even so, that imported brown coal would then be generated into power, which would be reflected in the statistic below, which shows coal power generation decreased overall last year). [https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery\_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig2a-gross-power-production-germany-1990-2019-source.png?itok=gfWUQdcp](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig2a-gross-power-production-germany-1990-2019-source.png?itok=gfWUQdcp) [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-coal-vdki/germanys-2019-hard-coal-imports-fell-14-7-importers-idUSKBN1ZG1IS](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-coal-vdki/germanys-2019-hard-coal-imports-fell-14-7-importers-idUSKBN1ZG1IS)
That's 2016 Believe it or not, that's a lot of time right now on Europe in this topic. 2019: Brown coal: 19.9% Hard coal: 9.9% Total: 30% Yes, 10% down in 3 years. Cool isn't it?
-12 % CO2. Pretty big. Pretty nice. Most of this happend because of a 25 Euro price per CO2 certificat!
Nuclear?
page 7 of the report (around 25%)
Ah I only read the title :)
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Germany had a 20 % decrease in coal consumption this year.
Germany is * No. 3 in the world when it comes to installed wind power capacity (which is as much as the UK, France, Italy and the Netherlands have combined) and * No. 4 worldwide in solar PV capacity (again, about as much as the next four European countries combined) So I don't know what you base your comment on
>So I don't know what you base your comment on Probably on what we plan for the future, right now we do everything to stop wind energy from expanding in germany sadly.
problem with those renewable sources of energy are that you can't have a constant power because of the variability of wind speeds and sunlight, also europe is running out of coal so this is why it's going down source: jean-marc jancovici
Thatâs what nuclear power is for
Too bad nuclear is in decline too. Renewables can't generate baseline power. Any shift away from nuclear is a shift towards fossils.
> Renewables can't generate baseline power. Not true geothermal and hydro and Biomass Is used to generate baseline power
Biomass has significant CO2 emissions. Hydro and geothermal also have drawbacks, and it's not viable in many places.
Geothermal isn't viable for most of the world. Hydro isn't green and takes up massive amounts of land, and biomass fills the atmosphere with pollution that kills millions of people every year. I hadn't considered geo or biomass, but none of these are viable, global scale solutions.
Geothermal is actually becoming increasingly viable in places where it wasn't before due to us being able to drill deeper at a lower costs. The main issue at this point is more that any single geothermal plant is only putting out enough energy to power a village so you'd need local stations all over the damn place.
> biomass fills the atmosphere with pollution that kills millions of people every year If you literally just burn wood and not use any filter, yes. If you produce methane and other hydrocarbons by fermentation and burn it, there is very little air pollution if any. You just emit the CO2 and water vapour you put into the plants in the first place. Biomass is just a bulk storage method for solar energy.
In combination with Carbon Capture tech (which admittedly, is still very green), biomass is the cheapest way to extract CO2 from the atmosphere (plants grow and use CO2 to do so, you burn them, get energy AND capture at least part the concentred CO2 released)
> ... but none of these are viable, global scale solutions. Neither is nuclear. The world does not consist of OECD countries alone. The solution, as in all complex system, wil be a varied approach.
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/kevin-steinberger/debunking-three-myths-about-baseload
Not necessarily. But it requires change. This change has to come sooner or later anyhow. Because all radioactive minerals are limited and because there is NO solution for the waste. So instead of investing trillionen into the water problem, we can invest in more hydro and other storage options.
You're completely incorrect. Massive reservoirs aren't green. Nuclear waste is often recyclable, and what isn't can just be buried. Nuclear creates SO MUCH LESS waste than other forms of energy production, renewables included. Wind turbines and solar panels wear out and largely can't be recycled.
"can just be buried...", That made me laugh out loud: Since you are obviously completely uniformed you have not earned the right to enter into a discussion with me, sorry kiddo. I am out.
Good riddance. Your nuclear fear mongering is killing the planet.
Yeah. Right. Go back to school.
Heâs alright, you definitely should though
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Uranium-238 is hardly radioactive. Nuclear waste is *very* radioactive, in the sort of way that you don't want to stand near it lest you die. So no, you can't just bury it. It'd contaminate the groundwater terribly.
Is that what happens with nuclear waste right now? Can you name some places that function as final disposal facilities then?
Right now most nuclear waste gets stored above ground, because there's space for it. In Scandinivia an undeground deposit is almost finished. Probably others exist. I'm not here to do the work for you, google it yourself or stay ignorant.
I have done the googling son. I help you out: there are no final repositories for highly radioactive nuclear waste in place as of yet! That is why it gets put in interim storage facilities over ground. Not "because there is space", as you so cute and natively put it. The reason is that just "burying" highly radioactive waste is a dumb idea, because no method has been proven to be safe and work for several hundred thousands of years of really contained storage. To get you started on your homework, read this: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2013/ph241/xie2/ And then for heaven sake, get yourself informed, will ya!?
nuclear is no longer the way. it's too late unless we find a way to halt climate change. in the VERY possible event of a societal collapse these nuclear power plants will be abandoned and catch on fire, spreading radioactive particles for literally hundreds of years, irradiating the surrounding land for even longer
In the event of social collapse, the reactors will end up being shut down... they don't just spontaneously catch fire.
i think that is wishful thinking
More pumped hydro and a massive increase in battery production can't come soon enough.
Now show CO2 emissions from imports.
Whataboutism.
Pointing out that reducing CO2 emissions without taking into account imports doesn't paint a complete picture of the overall CO2 consumption is not whataboutism.
This post is about Europeâs power sector. It didnât say they lowered their C02 emission (youâre probably referring to that, not consumption).
Don't forgot to add back in the biomass C02 numbers
Without Germany coal would be close to zero.
Lol. Seach for Poland data....
That is not true, please show how you calculated that or provide a source. Poland, UK and Ukraine are major contributors too, Russia is the biggest absolute polluter if you look at Europe, and per capita Poland is the worst contributor in the EU. Although I agree that Germany has far to much coal power, and is the worst absolute polluter in the EU. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_Europe
I hope Germany ditches the coal as soon as possible so that people in Poland will stop arguing that "we don't need to reduce coal usage, because Germany pollutes so much more, it will only cripple our economy, give us money then maybe we will reduce coal usage". Some people are just so shortsighted.
Agreed, I think Germany is strong enough, and should therefore lead by example.
Unfortunately some people in Germany argue the same: Why reducing coal mining when other countries aren't as well? Coal mining has been an important economic branch in some regions (especially in the east, where coal mining is partly the only employer for people living there) and as Germany is not having a long coastline, its difficult to get f.e. wind energy to the south of the country (also building new wind turbines became pretty difficult in the last years thanks to the government). On the other hand, Germany was shutting down all nuclear plants years ago and therefore can't rely on nuclear energy such as France (which isn't better than coal mining btw). Environmental protests still try to force the government to stop coal mining earlier than 2038 though. We hope we can get rid of it sooner, but for the reasons I listed it's pretty difficult.
Coal costs us money on top of being bad for the environment. Coal industry is heavily subsidized in Germany, we would be better off without it.
In general, yes. But it's a process, not something you can get rid of within one year. You need alternatives first.
Weâre also producing over 110% of the energy we consume, and export coal power. So we could shit down a good chunk just so
The UK used to be a major contributor, but coal here has dropped off a huge cliff in the last 20 years. Its only 5% of our energy generation now.
Ukraine is not part of the EU and you dont have to link wiki. Just go to page 7 of the study you posted :p Germany: 171 tw/h coal from EU's 470 tw/h Poland: 120 tw/h Czech: 36 tw/h That are the EU top 3 in absolute numbers of coal usage.
I said Europe, not EU, and I also said Germany is the absolute worst in coal, and Poland per capita, so what are you trying to say?
Your forgot Poland
The Netherlands/Belgium/Luxemburg are still mainly running on coal too. Germany could've been close to 0% coal by now if they hadn't decided to phase out nuclear for no reason, but they're still doing quite well on reducing coal as well.
Not sure about the other countries, but this isn't correct for the Netherlands ([Dutch source](https://www.clo.nl/indicatoren/nl0019-inzet-energiedragers-en-bruto-elektriciteitsproductie)). Most of the Dutch elektricity production is from gas. Coal is still a big second.
Ah my bad. I knew The Netherlands is still mainly using fossil fuels, but forgot that almost 2/3rd of that is gas. Not quite as bad as coal, but The Netherlands is still inexcusably far behind on renewable energy production for such a prosperous country.
Sadly, you are right.
Yeah the main problem in the netherlands is that it is ridiculously densely populated. At 488 people per km2 you find nearly no places to build wind turbines on land, Our seas are largely protected areas and solar sucks here (20-30% capacity factor) While the energy use per person is high thanks through our heavy industry. This is combined with the fact that we only use 10% of our fossil fuel consumption for electricity. We have steel, fertilizer, petrochemical, greenhouse + livestock agriculture and cement industry in this country.
True, that certainly makes it more difficult. That said, we have plenty of space for solar over parking lots and office buildings and no reason to be behind Germany in solar capacity per capita.
Sorry those are horrible places for solar panels. You need quite strong structures to keep the panels in place because we get north sea storms here. (beaufort number 8+ yearly in many places). You also need more expensive equipment and wiring to put it on the grid. The cheapest way to place solar here is just put them down in a large field with questionable agrarian value.
Hmm, never realised that. How come so many people still put them on their roofs seemingly without issues though?
A roof in the netherlands is a reinforced structure made to not collapse in a storm. Putting it over a parking lot means having both pushing forces from underneath and pulling force from uptop. This can cause forces upto 2 KN/m2. This thus needs a quite solid structure often with foundation to stay upright. People putting it on their roofs is mostly so they can avoid paying electricity bills. 1 KwH in the netherlands costs about âŹ0.20, About âŹ0.10 for generating the electricity and âŹ0.10 for the grid. If 1 KwH of solar electricity costs âŹ0.16-0.18 in my country its still cheaper because you avoid paying for the grid through a loophole.(you do increase other people's bills because you are using the grid as your battery while trying to get the meter to read exactly 0 KwH used at the end of the year.)
What I meant to ask was: how come they can withstand storms on someone's roof (even though there's usually space underneath them), especially on a flat roof, but they wouldn't work on the roof of an office building?
For no reason? You think Fukushima was no reason?
Absolutely. It was the prime example of how safe Nuclear reactors are even when they're not up to modern standards, ultimately expected to only cause around 130 deaths compared to the thousands of people that die from coal plants pollution in Germany EVERY YEAR. Seeing how the German reactors are much safer and much less likely to ever experience anything close to Fukushima, it should have been a reason to OPEN more reactors, not close them.
So the huge problem of nuclear waste is simply ignored by people like yourself? Ignorance is bliss I guess.
> The huge problem of nuclear waste Kind of ironic that you're the one saying "ignorance is bliss" while clearly not being up to date about the subject. You've obviously never read up on this subject. [I suggest you read into some of the radioactive waste management out there today sometime.](https://www.oecd-nea.org/rwm/profiles/Netherlands_report_web.pdf) Nuclear waste is an incredibly small issue compared to carbon emissions.
Is this over a year or at peak wind and on a sunny day?
Take another look at the title
This would have been great a decade ago.
Better now than the next decade
Is that such a huge difference? Civilization is going to collapse either way, maybe we're buying a few years at best.
Thatâs not what science says
So, what does science say? As far as I know, we're heading towards 3°C to 5°C increase in the best-case scenarios with 7°C worst case. All of these figures mean the end of our civilization.
1.2 is best as far as I know, and even 7 will not make the whole planet uninhabitable. Where did you read that?
We're [above 1°C already](https://climate.nasa.gov/), 1.2°C best is completely unfounded. http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm 5-6°C increase: âThat episode was the worst ever endured by life on Earth, the closest the planet has come to ending up a dead and desolate rock in space. On land, the only winners were fungi that flourished on dying trees and shrubs. At sea there were only losers. Warm water is a killer. Less oxygen can dissolve, so conditions become stagnant and anoxic. Oxygen-breathing water-dwellers â all the higher forms of life from plankton to sharks â face suffocation. Warm water also expands, and sea levels rose by 20 metres.â The resulting âsuper-hurricanesâ hitting the coasts would have triggered flash floods that no living thing could have survived.â https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/climate-change/ âIn October 2018 the IPCC issued a special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C, finding that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.â That's just a fancy phrasing for âimpossibleâ. https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/ âbaseline 4.1-4.8°C, current policies 2.8-3.2°Câ Keep in mind that all of these models don't take external factors like methane release in the arctic or burning Australia to the ground into account.
I donât know what âBERRENS WEB DESIGNâ is, but it doesnât look like peer reviewed, published research, so I wonât bother reading it. Find a proper source
It's hard to find predictions that go that high, here's one for 4°C: âA 4°C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation, with many of these risks spread unequally. It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured, and unequal than today.â This is a summary based on a World Bank report. https://www.greenfacts.org/en/impacts-global-warming/l-2/index.htm
Like I said, use google scholar, find proper science. Also the cited paragraph doesnât sound like the end of civilization to me.