Solar energy Is needed to stop global warming

Global warming is mostly being caused by several large-scale human activities. In addition to burning fossil fuels for energy,  large-scale deforestation for livestock production is a major environmental problem. It’s true that renewable energy sources alone can’t fix global warming but renewable energy is one of the most important solutions to climate change and should be pursued as quickly as possible if we want to have any hope of slowing the catastrophic effects of climate change.

Many of the world’s countries will be running on clean, renewable energy by 2040. Experts have predicted that as many as100% could do so by 2050. If these nations would follow the climate change roadmap and install the technological infrastructure to make the transition happen, tens of millions of jobs would be created. While the job increase may be a major reason to encourage such a transition,  low-cost renewable energy will mean lower energy costs than if we didn’t have solar and wind power. Despite the financial advantages of solar energy, the core impetus for sun power's development and growth today is to help stop global warming.

Climate change is a reality we can no longer afford to ignore

Climate change is happening, despite the rhetoric of the global warming deniers. Some of the key indicators of this truth have been presented on the US EPA website: “Average temperatures have risen across the contiguous 48 states since 1901, with an increased rate of warming over the past 30 years. Eight of the top 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1998. Average global temperatures show a similar trend, and all of the top 10 warmest years on record worldwide have occurred since 1998.”

Another important indicator related to global heat rise on the planet is in the water. “Ocean surface temperatures increased around the world during the 20th century. Even with some year-to-year variation, the overall increase is clear, and sea surface temperatures have been consistently higher during the past three decades than at any other time since reliable observations began in the late 1800s.”

These are just two of several indicators. Climate change deniers point to some arbitrary statistics as supposed evidence that the overall warming isn’t happening, like pointing out narrow areas where there is still sea ice, but they are only choosing to look at the outliers, not the overall trend. The rate of sea ice melting is the fastest its been in nearly1500 years. In 2016, more coral died in the Great Barrier Reef than in any previous year. In addition, there are numerous other signals that warming is not only occurring but is already significantly disturbing the climate and the world we live in. The overuse of fossil fuels is the chief contributor to climate change, and this fact has been confirmed based on theory and empirical evidence many times over.

The renewable energy transition

Germany has been a worldwide leader in the development of solar and wind power, and yet even with its commitment to them, climate change emissions have not dropped dramatically. The reason for this is that the country needs far more renewable energy production to replace its current over-reliance on coal. However, it’s not because the renewable energy installed isn’t functioning correctly. Rather, it’s that Germany chose to phase out nuclear energy quickly rather than phasing out fossil fuels more quickly. Renewable energy has chiefly been replacing low-emission nuclear energy. Although Germany has increased its renewable energy production dramatically over the last 12 years or so, there still isn’t sufficient quantities of it, so coal power plants there continue to burn huge amounts of coal and spew foul air pollution. Parts of Germany have already achieved a rate of 100% renewable energy.

Here in America, we are getting on the solar bandwagon. For more information see our information-packed blog;

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