Month: October 2017

Records keep falling in solar power production.

Michael Liebreich, Bloomberg New Energy Finance:

You have only to watch half an hour of any business channel to see at least one so-called expert opining on future oil prices. I say so-called, not because they lack credentials, but because they generally lack the successful track record that is the only true test of expert punditry. If these TV stations would research what their talking heads had predicted in the past – before the oil price surges of 2007-2008 and 2011-2012, say, or before the crashes of late 2008 and 2014 – they would realize they might as well interview Bubbles the Chimp. Bubbles doesn’t spend his time tracking tankers, monitoring storage levels at Cushing or listening to OPEC press conferences, but his views on oil prices are rendered no less valid by his intuitive approach.

But what about the long-term forecasters – the International Energy Agency (IEA) and its U.S. counterpart, the Energy Information Administration (EIA)? What about the oil companies, with all their resources and their legions of economists? What about energy ministries, grid operators, treasury departments, academia? From the earliest days of my Summit presentations, I have raised a reliable laugh by comparing their past clean energy forecasts with historical out-turns. There is now a whole internet genre making such comparisons, bringing pleasure to millions. I feel bad about it – many of the authors of these forecasts are friends and clients – but if they don’t want to be mocked for their forecasts, they either need to improve them or stop publishing them.

Continue reading “In the Middle East – Sun Rises as Oil Sets”

Above, Dan Kammen at about 1:00 minute in.  US companies are at a disadvantage without a price on carbon.

China is applying a price to carbon this year. It’s not because they love Polar bears.

Utility Dive:

While the Trump Administration is taking a number of steps to bolster coal-fired generation and rescind climate regulations, electric utilities should prepare for a very low-carbon future, former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told Utility Dive at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas last week.

Despite the White House’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, “there is no going back on the fight against climate and the innovation prize is enormous,” Moniz said. “We are talking about multi-trillion-dollar markets. The real issue is that the U.S. needs to capture a big part of that market to keep its innovation edge.”

As part of the shift to low carbon energy, the world has added a terawatt of renewables capacity in the last decade, with about a quarter of it in the U.S. and about half in China, Moniz said. “China is moving fast for a variety of reasons, including its very real concern about conventional pollution, its intention to be a leader on climate change, and its effort to capture the opportunity in renewables manufacturing,” he added.

Very low carbon ahead

Utilities differ depending on how they are regulated, whether they are vertically integrated, and whether they are investor-owned, public power or cooperative utilities, he noted. But broadly, the first thing he would say to utility CEOs is: “expect to go to very low carbon.”

They may encounter “bumps in the road” and delays “but we are going there and if they are making long term decisions and capital allocations, they would be crazy to base them on a high carbon future,” Moniz said. “Projections now show the Clean Power Plan targets will be achieved nationally, even without the Clean Power Plan.”

Without the CPP, however, state energy profiles will differ significantly, he said. “I would say to utility leaders in those states that if there is a 32% reduction in emissions by 2030 nationally, the few states which do not move in that direction are going to be behind the eight ball competitively.”

Cleveland Plain Dealer:

CLEVELAND — The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) will oppose a federal initiative aimed at coming up with a quick fix to the competitive problems of old coal and nuclear plants owned by FirstEnergy and other traditional utilities.

PUCO on Friday voted to urge the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reject a request from the Trump administration to quickly issue new rules aimed at helping the old power plants compete against new, ultra-efficient gas turbine power plants.

The problem is that nobody knows how much such a radical change to competitive markets would add to customer bills, said PUCO Chairman Asim Haque. Continue reading “We’re heading to a Low Carbon Future. No Administration Can Save Coal.”

News agency trials novel tactic.

It’ll be ok if we kill off animal life. We can still eat insects!

Wait. What?

Guardian:

The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists.

Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is “on course for ecological Armageddon”, with profound impacts on human society.

The new data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany but has implications for all landscapes dominated by agriculture, the researchers said.

The cause of the huge decline is as yet unclear, although the destruction of wild areas and widespread use of pesticides are the most likely factors and climate change may play a role. The scientists were able to rule out weather and changes to landscape in the reserves as causes, but data on pesticide levels has not been collected.

“The fact that the number of flying insects is decreasing at such a high rate in such a large area is an alarming discovery,” said Hans de Kroon, at Radboud University in the Netherlands and who led the new research.

“Insects make up about two-thirds of all life on Earth [but] there has been some kind of horrific decline,” said Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University, UK, and part of the team behind the new study. “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.”

The research, published in the journal Plos One, is based on the work of dozens of amateur entomologists across Germany who began using strictly standardised ways of collecting insects in 1989. Special tents called malaise traps were used to capture more than 1,500 samples of all flying insects at 63 different nature reserves.

Continue reading “German Study has Ominous Insect Finding”

Maybe if we don’t talk about it, it will go away.

That’s why they call it denial.

NYTimes:

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency has canceled the speaking appearance of three agency scientists who were scheduled to discuss climate change at a conference on Monday in Rhode Island, according to the agency and several people involved.

John Konkus, an E.P.A. spokesman and a former Trump campaign operative in Florida, confirmed that agency scientists would not speak at the State of the Narragansett Bay and Watershed program in Providence. He provided no further explanation.

Scientists involved in the program said that much of the discussion at the event centers on climate change. Many said they were surprised by the E.P.A.’s last-minute cancellation, particularly since the agency helps to fund the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, which is hosting the conference. The scientists who have been barred from speaking contributed substantial material to a 400-page report to be issued on Monday.

The move highlights widespread concern that the E.P.A. will silence government scientists from speaking publicly or conducting work on climate change. Scott Pruitt, the agency administrator, has said that he does not believe human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are primarily responsible for the warming of the planet.

Continue reading “Gagged. EPA Scientists Forbidden to Speak on Climate Research”

Time:

The White House said Monday that President Donald Trump has not altered his views on climate change, despite scientists’ warnings that Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, which recently ravaged portions of the United States, are evidence the warming global climate is making extreme weather worse.

“I don’t think think that’s changed,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Monday at the daily presidential briefing.

Associated Press:

A new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds that 63 percent of Americans think climate change is happening and that the government should address it, and that two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling the issue. Most Americans also think weather disasters are getting more severe, and believe global warming is a factor.

As the downpour from Hurricane Harvey stretched into its second day, with no end in sight, Joe Evans watched from the window of his home in the Jefferson County seat of Beaumont, and an unexpected sense of guilt overcame him: “What have we been doing to the planet for all of these years?”

Evans, a Republican, once ran unsuccessfully for local office. He ignored climate change, as he thought Republicans were supposed to do. But Harvey’s deluge left him wondering why. When he was young, discussions of the ozone layer were uncontroversial; now they’re likely to end in pitched political debate.

“I think it’s one of those games that politicians play with us,” he said, “to once again make us choose a side.”

Evans voted for Trump, but he’s frustrated with what he describes as the “conservative echo chamber” that dismisses climate change instead of trying to find a way to apply conservative principles to simultaneously saving the Earth and the economy. Even today, some Republicans in the county complain about Gore and the hypocrisy they see in elite liberals who jet around the world, carbon emissions trailing behind them, to push climate policies on blue-collar workers trying to keep refinery jobs so they can feed their families.

Evans isn’t sure if the disastrous run of weather will cause climate change to become a bigger priority for residents here, or if as memories fade talk of this issue will, too.

“I haven’t put so much thought into it that I want to go mobilize a bunch of people and march on Washington,” he said. “But it made me think enough about it that I won’t actively take part in denying it. We can’t do that anymore.”

Continue reading “Trump Voters, Hit by Storms, Conflicted on Climate”

We’re already paying a tax on carbon – with our lungs, our organs, our brains, and our health.

Science:

Senate Republicans have launched a new attack on peer review by proposing changes to how the U.S. government funds basic research.

New legislation introduced this week by Senator Rand Paul (R–KY) would fundamentally alter how grant proposals are reviewed at every federal agency by adding public members with no expertise in the research being vetted. The bill (S.1973) would eliminate the current in-house watchdog office within the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Alexandria, Virginia, and replace it with an entity that would randomly examine proposals chosen for funding to make sure the research will “deliver value to the taxpayer.” The legislation also calls for all federal grant applications to be made public.

Paul made his case for the bill yesterday as chairperson of a Senate panel with oversight over federal spending. The hearing, titled “Broken Beakers: Federal Support for Research,” was a platform for Paul’s claim that there’s a lot of “silly research” the government has no business funding. Paul poked fun at several grants funded by NSF—a time-honored practice going back at least 40 years, to Senator William Proxmire (D–WI) and his “Golden Fleece” awards—and complained that the problem is not “how does this happen, but why does it continue to happen?”

Continue reading “New Front in War on Science”

Clean out your desk.