Month: October 2014

Talking Points Memo:

Tesla Motors Chief Executive Elon Musk suggested that a Tesla Motors product is on the horizon.

Musk, in a cryptic, tweet on Wednesday, said that it’s almost time to “unveil the D and something else” at an Oct. 9 event.

The “D” could possibly be a new model of electric car from Tesla Motors.

Recode noted that Tesla Motors is already developing a sports utility vehicle, the Model X, and has announced plans to offer a $35,000 electric car that’s been called the Model 3 or Model E.

UPDATE:

Charged:

The mysterious missive is accompanied by a picture of what is undoubtedly a Model S peeking out from under a garage door emblazoned with a big stylish letter D.

So, what is it going to be? It probably isn’t going to be a brand-new Model D, but several EV-watchers have speculated that it might be an all-wheel-drive version of Model S. Tesla has already developed dual-motor AWD technology for Model X, and it has hinted in the past that an AWD Model S might be a cool thing, so…

–

The day after the tweet, a mysterious photo appeared on TeslaMotorsClub.com showing a a Model S P85D – definitely a new version of the S, and quite possibly a Dual-motor AWD version.

30 years late to the party but significant in that this magazine is on a lot of conservative coffee tables.

Smithsonian Magazine:

As humans continue to transform the planet at an increasingly rapid rate, the need to inform and encourage change has become ever more urgent. The situation is becoming critical for wild species and for the preservation of human civilization. Recognizing this urgency, the Smithsonian Institution has formulated its first official statement about the causes and impacts of climate change.

With special emphasis on the Smithsonian’s 160-year history and tradition of collection, research and global monitoring, the statement delivers a bold assessment: “Scientific evidence has demonstrated that the global climate is warming as a result of increasing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases generated by human activities.”

“The 500 Smithsonian scientists working around the world see the impact of a warming planet each day in the course of their diverse studies,”reads the statement. “A sample of our investigations includes anthropologists learning from the Yupik people of Alaska, who see warming as a threat to their 4,000-year-old culture; marine biologists tracking the impacts of climate change on delicate corals in tropical waters; and coastal ecologists investigating the many ways climate change is affecting the Chesapeake Bay.”

“What we realized at the Smithsonian is that many people think that climate change is just an environmental topic,” says John Kress, acting undersecretary of science at the Smithsonian. “It’s much more than that. Climate change will affect everything.”

I recently interviewed Brewster McCracken, of Austin, Texas’ Pecan Street Project,  who tracks the behavior of households that transition to renewable smart grid power and electric vehicles, and he noted that the top things electric car owners noticed after owning one for a period of time were the speed, and the quiet.  EV owners know that their cars are zippy and responsive, surprisingly so.
So its great to see a car company find a way to feature it in an ad – especially in a way that doesn’t rely on a testosterone soaked muscle car approach.

But, speaking of muscle cars, I was at the Battery, EV and Hybrid show in Novi, just outside of Detroit,  in mid September,  and was lucky enough to see BigFoot – the world’s first electric Monster Truck – and interview driver Jim Kramer.

Shell wants to drill in the Arctic. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, I was at home, putting together a presentation for the following day in Kalamazoo. But I was watching the Giant climate rally on YouTube, and it was clear that a sea change was in progress.  We  are seeing that play out day by day in the past week. Above, Tim DeChristopher deconstructs the march immediately after, and below, Todd Gitlin anazlyes with a week’s perspective.

The Nation:

Less than two weeks have passed and yet it isn’t too early to say it: the People’s Climate March changed the social map — many maps, in fact, since hundreds of smaller marches took place in 162 countries. That march in New York City, spectacular as it may have been with its 400,000 participants, joyous as it was, moving as it was (slow-moving, actually, since it filled more than a mile’s worth of wide avenues and countless side streets), was no simple spectacle for a day. It represented the upwelling of something that matters so much more: a genuine global climate movement.

Cynics will look at photos of the crowd, observe the staggering range of posters and banners, and conclude that those 400,000 participants — the number certified in a remarkable act of legitimation by Fox News — are so disparate that they can’t even agree about what they stand for; and that would be accurate, up to a point, but rather trivial in the end and certainly not as important as critics might imagine.

The same could have been said of the vast antiwar mobilizations of the late 1960s — crowds ranging from Quaker pacifists and Democratic liberals to Vietnam veterans and Viet Cong supporters, and more brands of revolutionary socialists than General Mills made cereals — and of the early feminist parades as well. The civil rights movement called itself nothing more specific than a “freedom movement,” and both its supporters and its adversaries knew in their bones what that meant. The house of the climate movement will hold many mansions (and probably its share of hovels, too), but for all the differing emphases, even conflicts on particular issues, there will be a great bulge of de facto agreement on one thing: governing institutions have, so far, defaulted and the depredations of corporations and governments have to be stopped. Now.

 

Slate:

The trailers for Interstellar thus far have done a remarkably good job of tantalizing fans without spoiling too many of the movie’s biggest set pieces. That is, perhaps, until now. The first half of the new trailer focuses on what appears to be the movie’s environmental message: Matthew McConaughey talks about the importance of adapting on the movie’s climate-change-wrecked Earth. But the second half takes us deep into the movie’s space travel sequences, and shows us a number of striking new images.

Some fans, if they’ve already committed to seeing the movie as fresh as possible, may prefer not to watch. But for the rest the new footage shows a mysterious walking hunk of metal that resembles the hammers from The Wall and a “mountain” that turns out to be, well, something else. The closing sequence is pretty intense, and suggests that Christopher Nolan should once again be able to deliver the thrills promised by all this teasing.

Older trailer here.

Continue reading ““Interstellar” May be a Cli-Fi Classic”

Meanwhile, in Crazytown, the rush for the doors continues.  Since last week’s mammoth climate rally in New York, a whole lot of re-calculating about climate denial, even among the true unbelievers.

Climate Progress:

The fourth-largest U.S. oil and gas company revealed Friday that it is leaving the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) amid widespread backlash over the free-market lobbying group’s efforts to undermine clean energy and promote climate change denial.

In a letter to its investment manager obtained by National Journal, Occidental Petroleum said it has “no plans” to continue supporting the group. The company said it determined that there are “other associations at the state-level that provide equal or greater value” than ALEC. It also cited concerns that it could be “presumed to share the positions” of other ALEC members, like the American Petroleum Institute and the Chamber of Commerce, on climate change and EPA regulations.

Occidental’s revelation comes just a few days after a number of tech companiesannounced they would abandon ALEC, an exodus spearheaded by Google chairman Eric Schmidt last week. Schmidt, in an appearance on NPR’s Diane Rehm show, said the company’s decision to fund ALEC was a “mistake,” because the group spreads lies about global warming and “mak[es] the world a much worse place.”

Climate Progress also noted that a leading far right wing Senatorial Candidate in Iowa has joined her science-denying colleagues now tiptoeing around the climate issue – no doubt being advised to soft pedal public statements so as not to play into the emerging media paradigm that climate denier = loon.

On Sunday, the Republicans’ Senate candidate from Iowa, Joni Ernst, joined the ranks of politicians who confess to not knowing the science of climate change, but remain happy declaring we need do nothing about it.

Ernst, a member of Iowa’s state senate, is going up against Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) for one of Iowa’s two seats in the national Senate. The two have been neck-and-neck in the polling, and last night they had their first debate at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. At about 41 minutes into the debate one of the moderators told Ernst they had received a number of emails concerning climate change, and asked her, “What do you believe about climate change, and what if anything will you do about it?”

Ernst began her response by praising Iowans and in particular Iowa’s farmers for their conservationist streak — a point on which Braley later agreed with her — and pointed out that her own family drives a hybrid car and devoutly recycles. But on the point of climate change specifically, Ernst dodged: “I don’t know the science behind climate change. I can’t say one way or another what is the direct impact, whether it’s man-made or not. I’ve heard arguments from both sides, but I do believe in protecting our environment, but without the job killing regulations that are coming out of the [Environmental Protection Agency] which is what Congressman Braley supports.”

“I do believe our climate is changing,” she continued, after being pressed. “But again, I’m not sure what the impact of man is upon that climate change.”

Continue reading “Denying Denial: Backing Away from the Crazy”

I’ve been covering the increasing knock-on impacts of climate change on the heartland – notably the Great Lakes region – where this past summer’s shutdown of Toledo’s water supply due to a climate-fueled toxic algae bloom caught the attention of a lot of bread and butter politicians.

One more reason why its getting harder and harder to run on a platform of climate-change-is-not-real.
When you can’t drink the water, that’s pretty real.

Toledo Blade:

Although not the primary source of Great Lakes algae, climate change is exacerbating the problem and making it harder to reduce phosphorus and other nutrients that help algae grow, experts say.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration records show a 51 percent increase in heavy storms — those that dropped 3 inches of rain or more within 24 hours — in the Midwest since the 1960s.

Jeff Reutter, Ohio Sea Grant and Ohio State University Stone Laboratory director, cited erosion, nutrient loading, harmful algae blooms, invasive species, oxygen-depleted “dead zones,” and climate change as Lake Erie’s six biggest issues at an Ohio Farmers’ Union presentation in Toledo last Monday.

“Climate change makes all of them worse,” Mr. Reutter said.

Continue reading “Climate Change Getting Real in the Heartland”