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Will Solar Save the Planet?
Will Solar Save the Planet?
As the IPCC sounds another alarm about climate change, solar energy supporters believe they have a solution.
Mark Hertsgaard October 2, 2013 (In Oct 21 edition of The Nation)
”We’re actually winning the fight against climate change, but most people don’t know it yet.”
That may seem a strange statement to make in a week when a landmark scientific report declares that humanity must quit fossil fuels within thirty years or risk catastrophic climate change. But Danny Kennedy, a former top Greenpeace activist who helps run the global solar company Sungevity, says that solar and wind power are growing so fast worldwide that they will displace fossil fuels much sooner than usually thought. He has lots of supporting data, much of which comes from the crazy tree-huggers at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Deutsche Bank and the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
…
Meanwhile, it’s renewables to the rescue. Kennedy argues that wind and especially solar are growing exponentially as millions around the world leave fossil fuels behind. In Germany, which has pledged to forsake fossil fuels and nuclear, “there are now thirty gigawatts of solar on rooftops—that’s the equivalent of thirty nuclear power plants,” he says. In China, renewables will make up more than half the power capacity added through 2030, when renewables’ capacity will equal coal’s, projects Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The solar growth rates in Kennedy’s homeland, Australia, are even steeper, rising from a mere 900 households in 2006 to 1 million today. “There is nothing else like these rates of adopting a new technology,” he says. “They’re faster than the adoption rates for cellphones.”
Solar is expanding even faster than wind power, thanks to plummeting costs and financing programs that enable people to put solar panels on their roofs with no money down yet lower monthly bills. “Solar is growing so fast it is going to overtake everything,” said Jon Wellinghoff, chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, in August. “It is going to be the dominant player. Everybody’s roof is out there.”
....
As the IPCC sounds another alarm about climate change, solar energy supporters believe they have a solution.
Mark Hertsgaard October 2, 2013 (In Oct 21 edition of The Nation)
”We’re actually winning the fight against climate change, but most people don’t know it yet.”
That may seem a strange statement to make in a week when a landmark scientific report declares that humanity must quit fossil fuels within thirty years or risk catastrophic climate change. But Danny Kennedy, a former top Greenpeace activist who helps run the global solar company Sungevity, says that solar and wind power are growing so fast worldwide that they will displace fossil fuels much sooner than usually thought. He has lots of supporting data, much of which comes from the crazy tree-huggers at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Deutsche Bank and the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
…
Meanwhile, it’s renewables to the rescue. Kennedy argues that wind and especially solar are growing exponentially as millions around the world leave fossil fuels behind. In Germany, which has pledged to forsake fossil fuels and nuclear, “there are now thirty gigawatts of solar on rooftops—that’s the equivalent of thirty nuclear power plants,” he says. In China, renewables will make up more than half the power capacity added through 2030, when renewables’ capacity will equal coal’s, projects Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The solar growth rates in Kennedy’s homeland, Australia, are even steeper, rising from a mere 900 households in 2006 to 1 million today. “There is nothing else like these rates of adopting a new technology,” he says. “They’re faster than the adoption rates for cellphones.”
Solar is expanding even faster than wind power, thanks to plummeting costs and financing programs that enable people to put solar panels on their roofs with no money down yet lower monthly bills. “Solar is growing so fast it is going to overtake everything,” said Jon Wellinghoff, chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, in August. “It is going to be the dominant player. Everybody’s roof is out there.”
....
Much more at:
http://www.thenation.com/article/176475/will-solar-save-planet#
15 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Give or take a few millenia 
Psychology (evolutionary or otherwise) isn't really a science.
Science requires:
A clear terminology
Quantifiability
Controlled experimental conditions
Reproducability
Testability/predictability
Psychology essentially fails on all five.
To spare the hurt feelings of those with perfectly valid (if unscientific) focuses... I'll allow 
a partial acceptance of "soft" science and "hard" science. But however you label them, they really aren't the same thing.
Oh god, that's just too much
You don't do fortune telling, but you're more than willing to post uncountable charts and industry pieces cheerleading that we'll be, or could be, at X-GW of renewables by such-and-such date over and over and over again (lest we forget the Jacobsen debacle for one such example).
