Month: November 2011

I was going to like, edit this thing down and use some part of it, but, sometimes you see something that’s so perfect,  well, you just don’t want to touch it.

You saw it here first.

Wind energy is just getting started. We’re a long way from moving beyond large, ground or ocean based turbines, but its inspiring to see the variations on a theme that technologists are currently developing.

This starts out as a run of the mill, generic, good-morning-america tour of a Minnesota wind farm, but the cool part is about 3 minutes in. A rare, brief, look at the heart and brain of the world’s biggest machine, the US power grid.

MISO is the Midwest Independent System Operator, where the pedal meets the metal for deciding which electrons get bought, sold, and moved, and to where.  There are regional hubs like this in other parts of the country, that operate in similar manner, and this is ground zero for the deployment of the smart, distributed grid that will be built with renewables in mind, rather than piggybacked on top of a creaking system.

When climate deniers tell you that we can’t deal with carbon because it will “cost trillions of dollars”, they are simply demonstrating ignorance. The US MUST and WILL spend trillions of dollars to upgrade its grid in the coming decades, because the current one is inadequate for the coming revolution. If we wish to remain competitive in the world, if we wish to move out of the 19th century and catch up with a world that is increasingly deploying 21st century technologies, massive expenditures are not optional.

Gernot Wagner in Yale Environment 360:

In recent months, some in Congress have been waging a whole-scale war against the Environmental Protection Agency. By now it has reached comical dimensions, with three separate bills aimed at preventing a so-called EPA “dust rule” that has never even existed.

The spectacle would indeed be funny, if it wasn’t deadly serious. Republicans in Congress and in the GOP presidential debates are seeking to defund an already cash-strapped EPA under the pretense of caring about the federal deficit and are trying to hamper the agency by arguing that its rules hurt the economy.

Quite to the contrary. We have 40 years of data to show that a cleaner environment goes hand in hand with solid economic growth.

Harvard Professor Dale W. Jorgenson, one of the deans of macroeconomic modeling who has been honing his model of the U.S. economy for decades, calculates that gross domestic product in 2010 was 1.5 percent higher because of the Clean Air Act of 1970. It turns out that protecting children from foul air leads to more productive adult workers.

That’s the moral equivalent of arguing for child labor laws by saying that keeping kids in school will increase their earnings as adults. But even this reductionist argument, focused only on a narrow definition of dollars and cents, works to show the benefits of cleaner air.

—

Leave it to the CEO of one of the largest U.S. utilities to set the record straight. Michael Morris, the CEO of American Electric Power, said during an investors’ conference call last month that EPA’s proposed tighter mercury and toxics standards would be anything but a job killer: “Once you put capital money to work, jobs are created.” Someone needs to install the scrubbers and modernize the existing energy fleet.

As Josh Bivens from the Economic Policy Institute put it in a recent congressional hearing on the same EPA toxics rules: “In short, calls to delay implementation of the rule based on vague appeals to wider economic weakness have the case entirely backward — there is no better time than now, from a job-creation perspective, to move forward with these rules.”

Indeed, the numbers just for the EPA toxics rule speak for themselves: up to 17,000 lives saved, and anywhere from 28,000 to more than 150,000 jobs created. That should satisfy even the worst cynics who believe jobs created should trump lives saved.

Smack in the middle of a La Nina event, which exerts a cooling force global temps, NOAA has measured October as the 8th warmest in the instrumental record.

NOAA:

The globe experienced its eighth warmest October since record keeping began in 1880. Arctic sea ice extent was the second smallest extent on record for October at 23.5 percent below average. Additionally, La Niña conditions strengthened during October 2011. According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, La Niña is expected to continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter.

This monthly analysis from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides government, business and community leaders so they can make informed decisions.

It’s exactly this reason why Tea Party Republicans want to target agencies like NOAA, because when informed decisions are made, they generally don’t fit the fossil fuel industry’s program.

The average Arctic sea ice extent during October was 23.5 percent below average, ranking as the second smallest October extent since satellite records began in 1979.

On the opposite pole, the October Antarctic monthly average ice extent was 1.2 percent above the 1979–2000 average, the 12th largest on record.

Arctic 23 percent below average, Antarctic 1.2 percent above. That disparity is why global sea ice cover continues to drop, apparently oblivious to the climate denial industry. The University of Illinois Cryosphere Today graph shows –

As long as Texans think the way to deal with Global Warming is to pray for rain,….well, God help them.

Bill Mckibben in Grist – writing on the Keystone decision.

Everyone from Tim DeChristopher speaking from jail to Robert Redford speaking from YouTubemade it clear that this is a more united opposition than the oil companies are used to dealing with. An opposition that takes strength from small victories, and which should be starting to worry the fossil-fuel industry just a little bit.

So I think we need a new name. Faced with projects like tar-sands oil which carry the possibility of deeply damaging the earth’s support systems, we should take to calling ourselves NOOPs: Not On Our Planet.

And if I weren’t a Methodist Sunday School teacher, I fear I’d be tempted to add an A to the end. If you’re an oil company executive willing to keep altering the chemical composition of the earth’s atmosphere, or a coal baron who thinks it’s okay to remove mountaintops, or a gas tycoon eager to pollute both water and air in search of some fracked riches — NOOPA! Find yourself a spaceship.

There is no Planet B.