Description:
Bryan Wilson lost his business during the 2008 recession but he, and the island he calls home, found a new future in offshore wind. After relying for decades on diesel generators for power, Block Island played a critical role in building the nation’s first, and only, offshore wind project. Today, Bryan is a wind technician and helping the nation’s smallest town lead the country on clean energy.
Longer feature is out, trailer here.
From the Infinity Wars soundtrack.
The movie is so dark from the get-go that when this pops on the soundtrack it’s a much needed blessed, bouncing relief.
EPA spokesman: ‘Have a great day. You’re a piece of trash.”
Really.
Shock and disappointment even among long-time aids whose careers have been damaged by association.
And who really wants a used Trump mattress?
That’s some really disgusting crazy.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says he changed his mind on the existence of man-made climate change because he “read a lot.”
“I heard a lot of experts, and I read a lot,” Bridenstine told The Washington Post on Tuesday. “I came to the conclusion myself that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that we’ve put a lot of it into the atmosphere and therefore we have contributed to the global warming that we’ve seen. And we’ve done it in really significant ways.”
The former congressman from Oklahoma had long denied the scientific consensus on climate change and said in a 2013 speech on the House floor that “global temperatures stopped rising 10 years ago.”
In May, Bridenstine first announced publicly that he now believes human activity is the main cause of climate change.
“The National Climate Assessment that includes NASA, and it includes the Department of Energy and it includes NOAA, has clearly stated it is extremely likely — is the language they use — that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming,” he said at a Senate Appropriations Committee subpanel’s hearing last month.
President Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt have not made similar pronouncements, however.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who previously questioned whether humans are primarily responsible for climate change, left no doubt Wednesday that his position has changed. Signifying a striking conversion, he confirmed that he now accepts that humans are, in fact, the leading cause. Continue reading “New NASA Admin – From Denial to Science?”
Jeff Goodell in Rolling Stone:
Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas and Louisiana last August, causing $125 billion in damage, dumped more water out of the sky than any storm in U.S. history. By one calculation, roughly a million gallons fell for every person in Texas. The water rained down on a flat former bayou that had become a concrete and asphalt empire of more than 2.3 million people. Highways turned into rivers and shopping malls into lakes. As the water rose, people scrambled for safe refuge – into attics, onto rooftops and overpasses. A Texas game warden captured a nine-foot-long alligator in the dining room of a home near Lake Houston. Snakes swam into kitchens. A hawk flew into a taxicab and wouldn’t leave.
As the deluge continued, tens of thousands of people fled – some in fishing boats down suburban streets, some in canoes, some on Jet Skis. Others risked a harrowing drive through water, fallen trees and swimming dogs. More than 30,000 people ended up in shelters. Thousands more headed up Interstate 45, toward Dallas, where parking lots at IHOPs and McDonalds were full of desperate people wondering how their suburban neighborhoods had turned into Waterworld. Many of them lived in their cars until the floods receded, and eventually returned to devastated homes.
Some people who hit the road during the storm kept going. A few days after the waters drained away, I was driving across central Arizona on old Route 66, which novelist John Steinbeck called “the Mother Road” – it was the route that hundreds of thousands of people took to escape America’s first man-made environmental catastrophe. Today, the ghosts of the Dust Bowl, the 1930s drought that caused a region roughly the size of Pennsylvania to dry up and blow away, haunt every gas station and roadside ice cream shop.
Near Flagstaff, I pulled into a service station and parked next to a Subaru with the words “We Survived Hurricane Harvey, Orange, Texas” scrawled on the back window in bright-pink letters. The mud-splattered car was loaded with luggage, boxes and a guitar case. A middle-aged woman and a scruffy man with wild brown hair pulled themselves out, looking road-weary and haggard. The man popped open the hood and fiddled with some wiring.
Continue reading “Jeff Goodell on the New Joads: Climate Refugees in America”
Plunging prices for renewable energy and rapidly increasing investment in low-carbon technologies could leave fossil fuel companies with trillions in stranded assets and spark a global financial crisis, a new study has found.
A sudden drop in demand for fossil fuels before 2035 is likely, according to the study, given the current global investments and economic advantages in a low-carbon transition.
The existence of a “carbon bubble” – assets in fossil fuels that are currently overvalued because, in the medium and long-term, the world will have to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions – has long been proposed by academics, activists and investors. The new study, published on Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that a sharp slump in the value of fossil fuels would cause this bubble to burst, and posits that such a slump is likely before 2035 based on current patterns of energy use.
Crucially, the findings suggest that a rapid decline in fossil fuel demand is no longer dependent on stronger policies and actions from governments around the world. Instead, the authors’ detailed simulations found the demand drop would take place even if major nations undertake no new climate policies, or reverse some previous commitments.
That is because advances in technologies for energy efficiency and renewable power, and the accompanying drop in their price, have made low-carbon energy much more economically and technically attractive.
Dr Jean-François Mercure, the lead author, from Radboud and Cambridge universities, told the Guardian: “This is happening already – we have observed the data and made projections from there. With more policies from governments, this would happen faster. But without strong [climate] policies, it is already happening. To some degree at least you can’t stop it. But if people stop putting funds now in fossil fuels, they may at least limit their losses.”
By moving to a lower-carbon footing, companies and investors could take advantage of the transition that is occurring, rather than trying to fight the growing trend. Mercure said fossil fuel companies were likely to fight among each other for the remaining market, rather than have a strong impact on renewable energy businesses.
Prof Jorge Viñuales, co-author, said: “Contrary to investor expectations, the stranding of fossil fuel assets may happen even without new climate policies. Individual nations cannot avoid the situation by ignoring the Paris agreement or burying their heads in coal and tar sands.”
However, Mercure also warned that the transition was happening too slowly to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Although the trajectory towards a low-carbon economy would continue, to keep within 2C above pre-industrial levels – the limit set under the Paris agreement – would require much stronger government action and new policies.
That could also help investors by pointing the way to deflation of the carbon bubble before they make new investments in fossil fuel assets. Continue reading “That’s Why They call Them Bubbles. Carbon Set for Biggest Pop in History.”
Above, latest jaw-dropping scandal for Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s EPA chief.
He used his position to try to secure a Chik-Fill-A franchise for his wife.
Let me repeat: He used his position to try to secure a Chik-Fill-A franchise for his wife.
Let that sink in.
Meanwhile, a judge is not having Pruitt’s statements that “no one knows” whether humans are prime movers behind climate change.
Embattled EPA Director Scott Pruitt went on national TV to announce on behalf of the US government that “I would not agree [CO2 is] a primary contributor to the global warming that we see… There’s a tremendous disagreement about the degree of the impact [of] human activity on the climate.”
So the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking the EPA to turn over documents Pruitt relied on to form this view, which is wildly out of step with the scientific consensus.
Instead of complying, the EPA refused, so PEER sued. In court, the EPA argued that complying with the request would be unduly burdensome, consuming “countless hours researching and analyzing a vast trove of material on the effect of human activity on climate change” which is “a subjective assessment upon which reasonable minds can differ.”
The judge ruled against the EPA and slammed them in his decision, calling the EPA’s response an “epistemological smokescreen” that was “both misplaced and troubling.”
Pruitt is a trumpist and thus a subscriber to Norman Vincent Peale’s fake it till you make it doctrine in which you just insist that you are right until you are either revealed to be right or you get bored and start claiming you’re right about something else, or possibly until you die.
“The agency asks ‘how is one to even know precisely what documents one relies on in forming one’s beliefs?’” the judge wrote in her brief. “As the plaintiff points out, however, nothing in the FOIA request seeks information ‘about Administrator Pruitt’s beliefs or how they were formed.’” Instead, the FOIA only requests any agency documents that the administrator relied on to formulate his public statement.
The judge also called it “particularly troubling” that the EPA argued that evidence for a factual statement by the Administrator can be unknowable. “EPA’s strained attempt to raise an epistemological smokescreen will not work here to evade its obligations under the FOIA,” Judge Howell wrote.
The judge also accused the EPA of engaging in “a thinly veiled effort to make the request more complex and burdensome than it is.” Howell concluded: “When the head of an agency makes a public statement that appears to contradict ‘the published research and conclusions of’ that agency, the FOIA provides a valuable tool for citizens… Compliance with such a request would help ‘ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society.’”
I made the video below following administration statements expressing doubt about consensus science. See archival footage from climate experts predicting effects of climate change in the 1980s, before many effects had even been observed.
Ask yourself how well experts understand the phenomena. Continue reading “Judge to Pruitt on Climate Denial: Put Up or Shut Up”
It’s easy to list the reasons that rural communities love wind — they provide a new source of tax revenue for counties and townships, lease payments for rural landowners, new jobs and economic development in areas that need it most, and they help to fund community projects and schools.
Now, a new report from Moody’s Investors Service highlights how wind projects are boosting tax revenues and helping erase debt in rural communities that host them.
A utility-scale wind farm is a multimillion-dollar project that provides a significant new source of tax revenue for the counties and townships through the Wind Energy Production Tax. Since 99 percent of wind projects are built in rural America, wind farms provide relief for small, rural towns that need it most.
According to Moody’s, wind farms have improved the finances in more than 400 counties in 41 states, which is more than double the counties that had wind farms 10 years ago. This new source of revenue provides funding for local infrastructure projects like improving roads and bridges, community projects and schools, or holding the line (or even cutting) property taxes paid by citizens.
Example: Jackson County
Jackson County, Minnesota, is a prime example of a rural county that is benefiting from hosting wind farms.
The county is expected to get more than 20 percent of its annual operating revenue from wind energy’s production tax. Residents across Jackson County are benefiting from wind energy whether they have a turbine on their property or not. The county recently completed a new, $14 million public works facility that, thanks to wind energy, local residents weren’t even asked to chip in to pay for. Additionally, wind farm revenue has prevented a 14.5 percent increase in property taxes for residents.
Jackson County has received an average of $1.6 million per year in tax revenue from wind energy since 2012. It hosts about 600 megawatts of wind energy and continues to use the tax revenue to relieve tax burdens for local residents and support capital improvements. The Odell Wind Farm developed by Geronimo Energy and now owned and operated by Algonquin Power & Utilities started a community fund to finance charitable community projects and opportunities. In fact, it recently awarded $39,000 for Chromebooks at schools and funding for a local library, fire departments, ambulance services, 4-H, FFA, robotics, and more!
But that’s not all that wind farms provide.
Wind projects also provide new, family-supporting jobs for folks who want to live in small, rural towns. The Lakefield Wind project employs 12 people with well-paying jobs (Minnesota wind energy technicians’ median wage is $26 an hour). “I am so fortunate to be able to live close to family and come back to my rural community,” said Josh Zeitz, site manager of the Lakefield Wind Project.
Revenue for landowners
Wind is also providing a new source of revenue for local landowners. “Wind energy is helping me pass our fourth-generation farm to our son. I’ve been nothing but happy with my turbines and the whole process,” said David Hanson, a landowner who hosts three Lakefield Wind turbines on his property.
Wind energy is investing in rural communities across the Midwest by providing new tax revenue, new jobs, new lease payments for farmers, and new hope for communities that need it most.
Above, Minnesota solar farm optimized for pollinators.
In many ways California has led the transition to renewable energy in the United States. As the state continues to build more and more solar and modernizes its approach to electricity planning, it has even begun to deny the continuation of contracts to existing gas plants in favor of clean energy alternatives.
California was one of only three states in 2017 to get more than 10% of its power from solar, but has not stopped there. According to an analysis of data from California’s grid operator compiled by pv magazine collaborator and self-described data geek Joe Deely, in May solar generation in the area managed by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) rose to a new record of 3.02 terawatt-hours (TWh), representing nearly 17% of in-state generation. With gas falling to only 2.67 TWh, or around 15%, this means that solar provided more electricity for Californians than gas – for the first time ever on a monthly basis.
It is important to note that as CAISO does not track rooftop solar or other solar generation behind a customer meter, all of the solar projects in the state actually generated as much as 50% more electricity than the CAISO figures show.
But as is usually the case, it is important to look beyond these two sources of generation to get a clear picture of what is going on here. While hydro generation has fallen from its high of 18% last May, it still provided 12% of electricity generation during the month, which is higher than in the drought years of 2014 and 2015.
Big gas turbine makers in the US and abroad are cutting staff with big layoffs, due to miscalculating both electrical demand growth, and the boom in renewable energy – driven by increasingly attractive economics.
The announcement is an acknowledgment that the company has not been properly positioned for where the energy market is headed. Oil and natural gas markets are dealing with a glut of supply and companies like General Electric have been forced to cut prices on their services. The long-term demand for renewable energy is growing globally, even as the American political climate damps its short-term prospects. And G.E. faces a raft of competition from international rivals in all those areas.
Just look at the company’s business for the big turbines at the heart of electricity-generating plants. Although more coal is being burned and shipped this year in much of the world, the trends favor renewable sources, where production costs are rapidly falling. Fewer coal and gas-fired power plants are being built, leaving more companies fighting over fewer projects. The result: G.E. is sitting on a pile of excess inventory.
A new review of global data on hurricanes shows that since 1980, the number of storms with winds stronger than 200 kilometers per hour (124 mph, or a strong Category 3) have doubled, and those with winds stronger than 250 kilometers per hour (155 mph) have tripled.
The analysis, published this week by four prominent climate scientists, also shows other clear trends, including a poleward migration of the areas where storms reach peak intensity, which puts new areas at risk, including New England and even Europe.
Storms are also intensifying more quickly, with a greater chance they will drop record amounts of rain, especially if they stall out when they hit land, as Hurricane Harvey did in Houston last year.
“The weight of the evidence suggests that the 30-year-old prediction of more intense and wetter tropical cyclones is coming to pass. This is a risk that we can no longer afford to ignore,” wrote the authors—Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Kerry Emanuel of MIT, Jim Kossin of NOAA and Mann.
Tropical storms are powered by evaporation of seawater. More than 30 years ago, one of us (Emanuel) developed a quantity called potential intensity that sets an upper bound on hurricane wind speeds. In general, as the climate warms, this speed limit goes up, permitting stronger storms than were possible in the past.
Of course there could be other changes in the climate system that counteract this – e.g. an increase in wind shear that tears the hurricanes apart, changes in the humidity of the atmosphere, or increases in natural or anthropogenic aerosols. This question has been investigated for many years with the help of model simulations. The results of numerous such studies can be summarized briefly as follows: due to global warming we do not necessarily expect more tropical storms overall, but an increasing number of particularly strong storms in categories 4 and 5, especially storms of previously unobserved strength. This assessment has been widely agreed on at least since the 4th IPCC Report of 2007 and reaffirmed several times since then. A review article in the leading journal Science (Sobel et al. 2016) concluded:
We thus expect tropical cyclone intensities to increase with warming, both on average and at the high end of the scale, so that the strongest future storms will exceed the strength of any in the past. Continue reading “Could Climate Change Create More Powerful Hurricanes?”
