If global climate change is posing an existential threat to humanity, then why don’t we do something to prevent it from happening? Parts of our planet are already experiencing temperatures that are too hot to sustain normal human activity, and thousands are dying. We are now being plagued with massive forest fires that are decimating critically important carbon sinks, and burning up homes, settlements and even whole towns. Widespread species extinction is endemic. Exotic tropical diseases are migrating northward to unprepared countries. Our oceans are heating, acidifying and rising. Glacier melt will be impossible to stop—just one, the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica, is destabilizing from its underside, threatening a 65 cm rise in the world’s oceans. The collapse of Thwaites would unleash an inevitable collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and an eventual 3.3 metre ocean rise, likely by the end of the 23rd century, if we’re lucky. Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emission have been consistently going up rather than down. What explains this incongruity?
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How Utility Scale Solar Impacts The Land
By Roy L Hales
The joint study from Stanford University and UC Riverside reads like a report card. The authors recognized that, “solar energy has one of the greatest climate change mitigation potentials” of all renewable energy sources. It can play a leading role in helping the United States reach its’ goal of reducing emissions to 80% of 1990 greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This would require covering a great deal of land surface. Using current technology, close to 71,428 square kilometres (44,383 sq. miles), or an area roughly comparable to South Carolina, could be covered with panels. Rebecca R. Hernandez et al examined more than 160 sites in California to find out how utility scale solar impacts the land.