by gmoke
Fri May 16th, 2025 at 12:50:20 AM EST
Trmpists are destroying as much objective reality - accurate fundamental measures on essential conditions - as possible. It makes it easier for them to bullshit and lie.
They are doing it all across the board starting from the failure to update the the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report in January 2025
(http://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/24/g-s1-44613/cdc-nih-hhs-health-data-mmwr)
and moving across all the other government departments and agencies they can reach.
At the US Energy Information Agency, which keeps track of energy accounting and projections, 100 out of 450 staffers have left since Trmp took office
(http://www.reuters.com/world/us/dozens-employees-leaving-us-eia-putting-crucial-energy-data-risk-sou
rces-say-2025-04-16/). Around the same time, March 2025, renewables [hydro, wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal...] generated more than half of USAmerica's electricity or as Reuters says Fossil Fuels Generate Less Than Half US Electricity First Month Ever, at least according to one energy think tank (http://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fossil-fuels-generate-less-than-half-us-electricity-first-mon
th-ever-says-energy-2025-04-04/).
Trmp cannot change this reality of renewable energy growth on the ground. Yet. There's too much installed capacity, more on the way, and the economics of renewables and battery technology are making them the lowest cost alternatives from household to grid scale almost everywhere. Trmp's "forward into the past" fossil foolishness makes less and less economic sense every day.
The rest of the world knows this too. That will not change either. Most if not all nations are going to continue to increase their deployment of renewables, in the EU especially, because of the Russian carbon war in Ukraine. Energy efficiency, the rapid adoption of heat pumps and increasing electrification of end use will also reduce the necessity for combustion fuels and tend to favor renewables.
While Trmp is stuck in a "Drill, baby, drill" fantasy of a misremembered 1950s, the Chinese are working on a 2 GW agrivoltaic [solar & agriculture
project which is also "ecovoltaic," because it rebuilds soil health while restoring natural habitats with native plant species below and around the solar installation (http://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/19/massive-2-gw-agrivoltaic-project-aims-to-restore-desert-in-china
/).
We'll see how this project works out over time but it combines some of the concepts which I believe are core to dealing with the climate, the loss of biodiversity and natural systems: a swift transition to renewable energy which avoids combustion and the pollution and inefficiency it produces and geotherapy, using natural systems to repair the damage our species has done.
But it's getting late and the longer we wait to act, the worse the damage will be.
