Today's
Der Spiegel, the largest European newsmagazine and leading German weekly, has a story about an upcoming solar eclipse this week and what it'll do to the German electricity grid. The maximum capacity of solar power in Germany is 39 GW, which is equivalent to 35-40 mid-size nuclear power plants. The Moon will eclipse the Sun by 82 percent Friday mid-morning to noon. If there are no clouds that day, then the electricity load of the grid will shift pretty wildly. First it'll plummet as the Moon moves in front of the Sun, and then it'll bounce back, and even higher than before, because then it'll be noon. From one hour to the next, load capacity will vary by 15 GW.
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| Solar power input 3/20 at cloudless sky in gigawatt |
Germans are doing this because decarbonizing the economy is the only way to mitigate the impact of climate change. The national consensus is that climate change is real, our fault, and bad. On February 21
Der Spiegel had a front cover on the topic. Translated, it reads:
Planet wasted--how greed for growth destroys our climate.
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| Coverpage of largest European weekly 2/21/2015 |
Compare this to the political discourse on climate change in the US and Florida. On February 27, Republican Senator J. Inhofe appeared on the Senate floor with a snowball in hand to demonstrate that climate change cannot be real. Remarkable is that an American politician can do this in an official setting in front of an audience that represents the establishment, and in this setting
no one laughs. Intriguing from an anthropological point of view is that Inhofe is no random American Senator, no; he is
the chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in the United States of America in 2015.
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| Senator Inhofe (R, Okla) shows snowball to prove climate hoax |
In Florida, finally, the American Disenlightenment takes a censorious twist. Since disenlightenment consists in disconnect from scientific information, it is logical that the Florida state government had an unwritten policy of discouraging state employees from using the words "climate change," "global warming," and "sustainability".
Miami Herald broke the story March 8.
It is fascinating is how polarized things have become. There are now profoundly different cultural sensibilities on the topic. While the scientific consensus is as hard as it can get, and a number of nations is taking action--in such tangible form that German utilities now need to worry about solar eclipses (that must be a first!) and that, globally,
in 2014 carbon emissions did not increase--the powerful exponents of the American Disenlightenment are doubling down.
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| Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) |
