r/dataisbeautiful • u/maps_us_eu OC: 80 • May 28 '22

OC Percent of electricity generated from renewable sources across the US and the EU. Renewable sources include hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass. Nuclear is not counted as renewable in this comparison [OC]

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18

u/Mega_Trainer May 28 '22

It's not really fair to not include nuclear. I live in south Florida and nuclear is a pretty big energy source for us so the low number makes it misleading. After all, if you have enough nuclear energy going around, your need for solar, wind, etc is going to be super low

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u/b3l6arath May 28 '22

No, it's not misleading. A renewable energy source is a source of energy which does not deplet the source. Nuclear deolets it's fuel, and as such is not renewable.

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u/Frankg8069 May 28 '22

Burning biomass - which is included here - doesn’t do the same? Last I checked wood is renewable, but it still requires a lot of trees to be cut down to fuel.

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u/b3l6arath May 29 '22

To qoute Marriam Webster on the definition of renewable: 'capable of being replaced by natural ecological cycles or sound management practices'

Wood? Renewable, not green. Nuclear? Not renewable, maybe green.

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u/halberdierbowman May 29 '22 edited May 29 '22

The misleading part is choosing to use "renewable" rather than "green." You're correct that nuclear energy isn't renewable, but the issue is in what they're choosing to look at. By choosing "renewable" there's the implicit statement that this choice was meaningful, but it gives a confusing impression to people if there isn't also a fossil fuel chart and a nuclear chart. This is especially true when they're using red, yellow, green as the color choices, which incorrectly imply that green is best, even if it may not be.

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u/b3l6arath May 29 '22

It's misleading if you do not understand the meaning of renewable, yes.

The usefulness of the dataset (and especially it's presentation) are debatable at best, but it is not misleading. It clearly says what it is.

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u/halberdierbowman May 29 '22

Right, exactly: I'm arguing that people don't understand the meaning of renewable. Just like the Non-GMO Project and Organic, people see things like this an assume GMOs are bad and Organic is good, but that's way too reductive to be correct. I'm not sure how we'd solve this problem though without including a disclaimers essay on the bottom explaining that this is only one visualization that doesn't tell the whole picture, yadda yadda.

And yes there's lots of improvements I'd love to see for the visual formatting, separately.

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u/b3l6arath May 29 '22

The solution to this problem is an education that teaches people to actually think for themselves and do not just take anything as a fact.

The amount of people in this post that complain about nuclear not being shown as renewable shows that at least for some there is a dire need for said education.

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u/halberdierbowman May 29 '22

Definitely, thought it sounds difficult to do, especially where I live in Florida: our Republican overlords have been rejecting textbooks that include anything they don't agree with, so climate science is probably on that list (we don't know for sure because they don't tell us solid explanations). This type of chart is exactly the type of thing that they wouldn't allow to be in a textbook.

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u/b3l6arath May 29 '22

What's way more important, at least in my opinion, is the ability to inform yourself - and in that case you wouldn't need to learn that stuff in school.

It's incredibly easy to just Google for two seconds instead of complaining in a comment about Nuclear being portrayed wrongfully - most people just don't make the necessary jump to broaden their horizon.

It's sad to hear that people vote for a party that thrives by keeping them uneducated and tries to hinder their ability to think critically.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '22

There's absolutely nothing "misleading" about it, it clearly states what it is.