"Xcel Energy, the Minneapolis-based utility provider,
announced its intention to go completely carbon-free by 2050."

Absolutely Brilliant! Well done, Xcel!

Except, the world's gonna be fucking Dead
(for us peeps and other fine creatures) by then.

Still, a fine and Lofty sentiment.....

Racist, murdering pieces of shit going to jail for the rest of their lives, and corrupt scumbags from golden towers losing sleep as they contemplate a similar fate. What great news items to end the week!

@3: And corrupt scumbags from golden showers as well.

Ooohhhh----I sure do hope that Trumpty Dumpty invested all its ill-gotten stock billions into coal just to go bust! $1 billion x 0 = 0. Not even the Big Banksters will bail out that big of a loss. I'd so love to see Trumpty Dumpty, on its way to prison, bawling and penniless like Tim Eyesore--very shortly after all other its loyal RepubliKKKans, marching in lockstep have jumped their sinking ship.

The driest winter in a long line of dry and warm winters over the last 10 years. Worst, weathermen and weatherwomen as well as locals who will say "What amazing weather" when its sunny and 10-15 degrees warmer than it should be forget thats not what the weather is supposed to be like.

Imagine going to antartica and finding a sunny, warm, sandy beach. Sure, you individually make like it but at some level you have to grasp this shit isn't normal. It hasn't significantly snowed in Western Washington in almost a decade. 20 years ago,it snowed at least 5 days a year, it wasnt hotter than 80 degrees for more than half a week, the hot season was just late July through mid August rather than May through October. It was 70 degrees this last October for gods sake. People should be fucking panicking but instead they just talk about how beautiful the weather is. As if this were southern california and not the pacific northwest.

@6 araucania: I know, right? I'm already dreading the smoke from wildfires in July 2019.
Folks--THIS IS NOT NORMAL!

That time Puget Sound was under 1000 feet of ice?

Not normal!

No article on the horrors of being harassed/raped by powerful men like Neil de Grasse Tyson? The #MeToo thing has run its course then? Tyson appears popular at this paper - why silent on the issue?

@9: it's been mentioned previously. your accusations of hypocrisy are tiresome.

@8 Well, you are one of the usual trolls, but shouldn't the large swings in climate over 10k's years tell you something about the wisdom of playing sorcerer's apprentice with climate forcings like greenhouse gases?

Also note that it took 10000's of years of cooling to get ice sheets in Puget Sound at the glacial maximum (we are at a glacial minimum), but 200 odd years of pumping carbon in the atmosphere is all it took to start sending the weather we depend on into a tailspin.

Less trolling, more thinking.

@11: Less trolling, more thinking. That's good. Less hype, more thinking - is even better.

@12 Hype? Like climate scientists warning us of an existential threat to civilization if we don't act decisively within 12 years. You don't seem to know the meaning of words or is it your Fox watcher compulsive denial syndrome acting up?

Imagine my joy when I went out to the paperbox and saw this morning's quite large Seattle Times headline-
MEMO: TRUMP ORDERED HUSH MONEY
even better was the sub-head: Prosecutors say Michael Cohen's act was criminal and president was directly involved with it
Really impossible to spin away that header.
I know we all lament the baneful influence of FOX News and Sinclair Media, but at least the message is getting out to all Americans with eyes to see that President Trump was directly involved in a criminal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.

@13: The only reason one would disagree with @12 is they think "hype" is better than thinking. Don't get so defensive, unless you think that hype is the only way to trumpet the perils of global warming.

@11 anon1256 (re @8 ): Thank you.
@14 kallipugos: I know, right? I'm stocking up on good wine and popcorn for when Trumpty Dumpty gets hauled away in a straitjacket. I envision a globally celebrated, highly comical re-enactment of the final scene of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in which Ethel Merman is rolled out on a hospital gurney after a dramatic fall, kicking and screaming.

" Like climate scientists warning us of an existential threat to civilization if we don't act decisively within 12 years."

So after 12 years you promise to shut the fu*k up, because India and China are building coal power plants faster than your mother can unbutton her overalls. And just wait until Africa fires up its economic engines over the next 30 years.

@18 I suspect it shouldn't be surprising that for your type, global warming will really become an issue only after brown people start burning fossil fuels in earnest. Racists can't help themselves I guess.

I have said it before and a troll clearly doesn't warrant another answer that will be promptly ignored, but I can tell that your "what about the brown people" non-sequitur has been getting traction among denying dimwits as it becomes more and more apparent that climate is changing for the worse.

Current levels of emission are sufficient to wreak climate even if emissions from developing countries would likely speed up warming if no climate change mitigation occurs. All that really need to be said is above because I can't imagine anyone credible concluding that since brown people will eventually pollute as much as we do, we should just keep polluting.

Most of the warming observed is due to emissions incurred in the developed world and our carbon footprint per capita is likely to remain several fold higher than that of the developing world. Developing countries have shown they understood the need to phase out fossil fuels and have acted accordingly even if they have a long way to go. Since 2016 they are collectively spending more on the transition to renewables than the developed world (who according to reports is essentially not paying his share). China has already over twice the renewable energy capacity of the USA and India has seen huge investment in photovoltaics. The developing world is producing most of the consumer products we buy so they are sure to use a lot of energy and cause emissions. Outsourcing manufacturing is NOT climate change mitigation, it's merely displacing the source of emissions even though the consumer's carbon footprint hasn't changed and it is still HIS responsibility to consume sustainably.

We don't really need to wonder who is going to stfu about climate change. As a matter of fact, deniers are already a lot quieter than they used to be.

@15 so now, you are going to pretend that your quip wasn't aimed at me even though you were directly replying to me. What a waste of time you are.

@20: Why don't you realize the fact that global warming an be discussed without hype?

So from the looks of things one person who will be having a lot of say about the course of events over the next two years is Jerry Nadler.
Yeah, I'd never heard of him either, never really on my radar.
But he is the incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee and it will be his call on impeachment proceedings.
From the little research I've done on the guy (Wikipedia) I'd say the Republic will be well-served by the man, but we shall see, won't we?

"Most of the warming observed is due to emissions incurred in the developed world and our carbon footprint per capita is likely to remain several fold higher than that of the developing world"

Yep, that's caused by what we call our "wealth". But keep insisting we live on a third worker's carbon footprint and you'll have yellow vests smashing up downtowns in the US too. And even better luck convincing India and China they can't continue their break neck economic growth and resulting increases of CO2 emissions as they develop their own domestic consumer cultures.

"it's a lost cause because human nature, so why try to stop it?"
-former deniers with energy stocks turned fatalists with energy stocks

@24 Maybe if you didn't make every effort to cut CO2 emissions part of your actual plans, economic redistribution, then yeah.

@14 kallipugos: It's interesting that The Seattle Times ran the article. The profiteering Blethens must have gotten a shitload of subscription cancellations after they stupidly endorsed Dino Rossi for 8th District Congress.
@17 German Sausage: Pfft. Fox TV can run itself over a cliff.

@23 don't pretend to be what you aren't. A simple glance at emissions per capita would tell you that a gilet jaunes' carbon footprint is quite similar to that of the average Indian/Chinese and ~1/3 that of the average American, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

You'd probably want to riot even if you were asked to reduce your emissions to that of the average French person. The gilet jaunes apparently also understand the need to phase out fossil fuels but simply don't want the pay a disproportionate amount of the cost of mitigation.

@21 More unsubstantiated assertions from you will do nothing to dispel the notion that you are a troll.

So we're 3.52 inches short of our average annual rainfall? I just looked at the forecast on my Weather Underground app and 3.88 inches is expected over the next 10 days. It shouldn't be surprising that the rainfall is lower than last year, last winter was so wet we were breaking records.

@29 Climate change is not expected to have a large effect on NW annual rainfall amount but on its distribution throughout the year. Summers are expected to be drier while other seasons will see more intense precipitation events. https://cig.uw.edu/learn/climate-change/
This seems fairly consistent with what have we have seen so far.

Whenever the weather isn't average, I know something's wrong.

@31 it's the psychosis in your head speaking. How could you assume so many identities without paying a price for it?

@30 I won't deny climate change exists but I think we do a disservice to addressing it by spreading misinformation and false analogies. That's why we still have morons who refute climate change by clinging to anachronistic terms like "global warming."

70 degrees in october. Average highs above 70 from June to August, Average lows above 50 from March to fucking October. Each year around 4/5ths of overall rainfall of the year before at BEST.

Look at BC and California folks. This aint normal. And its moving into WA.