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Interesting how the opinions of the traditionally emission-happy HN comment section seems to have shifted: in 2017 the top comment pooh poohs renewables. in 201
by fulafel 6y ago
Interesting how the opinions of the traditionally emission-happy HN comment section seems to have shifted: in 2017 the top comment pooh poohs renewables. in 2018 the top comment is kind of neutral (talks about showing differences between countries). And in this threads the current top comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24749472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24749472 is clearly coal-critical.
This reflects my own experiences, eg questioning frequent air travel no longer gets you barrages of downvotes.
- the_cramer 6y agoIt's important to understand that not only the opinion changes, but the situation in itself. Producing renewables is now much cheaper than a few years ago. Production processes are getting more efficient, thus less co2 intensive and energy conversion rates are getting better. A few years ago it maybe was not clear that people had a legitimate interest in renewables. The producing companies probably do not care about the environment outside of laws, but if the request for renewables is high enough, a market can emerge and prosper. This is very hard to predict even for smart economy people unlike me.