Developing And Implement Green Technology

One of these concerns is that the cost transitioning to clean energy would be too expensive. It is true that shifting to green energy would have notable start-up costs; however, generating energy from these

Renewable energy’s increasingly greater power output has “made wind and solar more competitive with fossil fuels in many regions” (Warrick). In fact, renewable energy has improved so much, both financially and technologically, that many “developing economies will ultimately choose renewables over cheap coal”, enabling them to “skip over a generation of technology” (Warrick). Hydropower, geothermal energy, solar energy, and wind energy will only keep improving in power output until they inevitably become the best choice for electricity. Now that private tech companies have begun to back renewables, their technology is increasing at an extraordinary pace. With more prominent business leaders supporting renewables, the public is more inclined to accept them. People like Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla (and many other companies), fund and promote clean energy projects to raise popular support and develop new renewable technologies. Some people argue, however that renewable energy will never produce enough energy to power the entire United States. After all, “by 2016, wind energy accounted for just over 6.7 percent of U.S. electricity production” and solar energy sits at just “0.6 percent” (Renewable). While this number seems extremely low, it has been increasing rapidly. In 2012, “solar energy accounted for only 0.2 percent of the electricity

Koonin, who was the undersecretary for science in the Energy Department, a professor of theoretical physics and provost at Caltech, a chief scientist of BP, and is currently director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. With all those positions, Koonin appears to be a very credible proponent for delaying climate change. He argues that climate science is not settled and society should, in turn, hold off in making brash decisions. Koonin states that there are three challenges to why climate change is not settled: the climate systems variability, the poor understanding of oceans regarding climate, and the uncertainties regarding positive and negative feedback loops (2). In other words, Koonin is saying that there are many things we do not know when we predict the climate. Koonin adds that “although most [computer] models are tuned to reproduce the gross features of the Earth’s climate, the marked differences in their details and projections reflect” all the things he stated that climate science is not settled on (3). Ergo, he concludes by saying “any serious discussion of the changing climate must begin by acknowledging not only the scientific certainties but also the uncertainties, especially in projecting the future” (5). Koonin is concerned less with the certainties of climate change than with the uncertainties of climate change. This is troubling because it delays and perhaps halts the general public from agreeing towards a sensible solution in dealing with climate change. Primarily, all humans fear uncertainties -- nothing is scarier than not knowing what can happen. So if humans are scared due to the uncertainty of a situation, they hold off from making decisions which are vital to their future. Nonetheless, life is filled with uncertainties and that should not prevent society from making progress on climate change. After all, it would be wiser to

Till this day the U.S. still goes through a lot of influence over the world, and remains to be the dominant power. I believe that a green revolution or renewal in the US and for the US economy could very well help the US regain some of it’s lost power and preponderance, as well as benefit the global effort to cut back on fossil fuel emissions. Global energy shifts are usually associated with a shift in global hegemonic power, in the case of the US I believe they could reassert their dominance by introducing an economy based off renewable resources, and perhaps cause a global energy shift and a reaffirmation of power at the same time. If commercial and social factors are in fact more important than technical factors it is not a matter of whether America can be the leader in the green revolution, it is a matter of whether America is willing to be the leader or not. I believe with the proper research and commercialization of going green with the economy, the US could make green technology competitive enough against fossil fuels such as oil and coal to shift to sustainable energy altogether. For example, historically we see a shift from biomass to coal in the 19th century because of political, commercial, and even social factors. The United States had a clear abundance of

He claims that doubt is used to compete with scientific facts by creating a controversy. It is argued that the position these wealthy companies are in allows this doubt to prosper. They can afford to donate millions to studies that downplay the effect of their product, while the funding for opposing, scientific research is much less. Sauven states, during George W. Bush’s presidency, the federal government assisted to cast doubt about the scientific consensus on climate change. It’s highlighted that half of the federal climate scientists had been asked to remove parts discussing climate change, many report their work had been altered to downplay climate change, and censored data proving climate change was

The third problem claimed by Staman and Slob (2012) is that evidence-based policy is not always possible due to the way scientists often seclude themselves in established their conclusions, it is often advisable for scientist to hear the opinions of all parties involved in order to understand how complex politics can be.

Finally, the last obstacle is technological. With renewable energy and green technology being new, the technology is simply not as efficient as it is required to be (New York Times, Arthur Ochs). Energy means nothing if there remains no long term way to store it, “Energy is most useful to us when it is concentrated, transportable and storable” (Powering Planet Earth, 41). So a larger capacity and longer lasting battery would be greatly beneficial to green technology as well as the outside that market due to the spillover effects.

Further, the literature review suffers from an additional lack of clarity in the paragraph on the bottom of page 634. Here, the authors begin to delve into the theory and rationalization behind including uncertainty as an appropriate measure. The authors write, “Uncertainty can affect an individuals willingness to act on environmental beliefs in several ways” signaling to the reader that a laundry list of factors is to follow. However, they only make mention of one tangentially linked evidence based factor, that an increase in the complexity of issues leads to increased uncertainty in the scientific community. No further examples in support of uncertainty follow this one. Instead, the authors pivot towards unfounded speculation about uncertainties role in individuals willingness to take environmental action, and then they abruptly transition to their discussion of trust. The issue of uncertainty persists in the manner with which the authors have chosen to operationalize their research question.

In these statements, scientists also acknowledge the existence of uncertainty in their assertions and theories. That is, they do not dismiss the “off” chance (or conflicting data) that the statements made may be incorrect. The statements are simply what the scientific community widely holds as “true” given the amount of data and research we, as humans, currently have. Thus, these conclusions act as resolutions to scientific controversies and are often structured in a way that embodies the large amount of overwhelming data and consensus within the scientific community.

Currently, since scientists have valued facts differently it is essentially an implication that no risk factor is at the moment convincing enough. Hence, rather than disagreeing upon which factor is essentially the cause, scientists have come to a mutual understanding that “none of the identified factors seem to be suitable” (Hempel, Chambers, Bagnall, & Forbes, 2007). The example of this chronic condition represents that viewing facts from different opinions and perspectives is not necessarily a mechanism for disagreement: but it is a step toward experts agreeing that further research is crucial. Consequently, the Natural Sciences prove that different values do not always lead to disagreement and hence varying perspectives is not a dependable mechanism for disagreement. This is because scientists do not always require personal knowledge to draw conclusions, and are usually open to considering varying

Data is data, after all, and on issues like climate change the facts are irrefutable. In the alternative response, it is true that many people cannot be persuaded on many issues, and we must ultimately act on what we feel to be right when emergencies arise.

As an American citizen I have had first hand experience witnessing grave reports concerning the accelerated melting of the polar ice caps and the uncertain fluctuations in the average cost of a barrel of oil. These problems loom over the fate of the world economy and its environment. To answer this problem the US must set an example to invest in alternative sources of energy to decrease our dependence on foreign oil and reverse global warming. In a report made by Arjun Makhijani PhD, the president of the Institute For Energy and Environmental Research stated that, “The US renewable energy resource base is practically untapped.” If we were to

Instead scientists begin with a hypothesis to explain why there is a problem and then gather evidence or data to test it” (Hankinson, Lesson 4b).

This is why it was vital to argue about using the word appreciable or discernable as happened when writing the IPCC report (Oreskes and Conway, 205). Scientists are expected to discuss certainty and should be reprimanded for not doing so. But discussions of uncertainty can simultaneously leave research open to attacks from individuals with political motivations. So, while anthropogenic climate change was confirmed by scientists because of the commonality between models’ projections, individual margins of error allowed policy makers and members of the public to be misled into believing that climate change was not a settled scientific topic, even when it

In contrast, some believe that renewable energy is a key factor involved in helping the economy to grow. Many jobs are created in the manufacturing and running of renewable energy plants. The renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies created 8.5 million new jobs and $970 billion in revenue in the year 2006 (Langwith, “Renewable Energy is Economically”). The American Solar Energy Society says by 2030 it could generate up to $4.5 trillion in revenue for the U.S and create 40 million new jobs. This would represent one in every four jobs (Langwith, “Renewable Energy is Economically”). This shows how vital it is to get renewable energy companies in the U.S. It is important to build a stable economy again and do it all while helping the environment.