What is the point of this convenience when it really seems to just be making people miserable and isolated?
We're driving off a cliff, and our elected government has a death drive.
- People in automobiles.
I'm not saying billionaires are victims, but everybody wants it to be someone else's fault and none of their own fault. It's exhausting.
Which you are financing through a BNPL platform.
So, now I'm focused. I'm very focused.
Maybe America, not many countries on earth, especially in Asia which are full steam ahead on renewables, pun intended.
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.
My point is that if demand only increases, then they won't be able to shut down carbon-emitting power plants. The first objective should be to replace non-renewables with renewables, and only then scale production up.
Granted, there will likely always be non-renewable power generators running to maintain a baseline / frequency / etc, at least until very-large-scale power storage is a thing.
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.
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.
EDIT: I'm not a renewable skeptic, answers bellow
This government meta study of 3,000 such studies puts PV solar at roughly 20x less emissions than coal.
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 decades passively making energy with very few externalities.
Not to mention, recycling solar panels & batteries is getting cheaper & more effective by the day. The metal (and even oil!) you dug out of the ground to build them didn’t get burned up; a lot of it is still usable.
