Stephan: More good news about the transition out of the carbon energy era. Note that this report is largely about lower-income developing nations. Why does that matter? Because it means that these nations are going to be able to skip the messy, dirty, environment destroying carbon energy era, just as they skipped the copper wire telephony era, and went straight to mobile phones.
It’s official: solar became the cheapest source of new energy in lower-income countries this year, giving both companies and governments alike another reason to ditch coal and gas for renewables.
Data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) show that the average price of solar energy in almost 60 countries dropped to US$1.65 million per megawatt during 2016, just below wind at US$1.66 million per megawatt.
That’s based on average prices across 58 emerging markets, including China, India, and Brazil, and it means renewable energy will be an increasingly attractive way to go for companies investing in new power plants in the future.
“Solar investment has gone from nothing … five years ago to quite a lot,” BNEF analyst Ethan Zindler told Tom Randall at Bloomberg. “A huge part of this story is China, which has been rapidly deploying solar.”
Last year, China invested $103 billion in solar projects, more than the US ($44.1 billion), the UK ($22.2 billion), and Japan ($36.2 billion) put together.
Prices have also been dropping at auctions, where private firms bid against each other for big electricity contracts.
Jeff Atkins , Postdoctoral Scholar at Virginia Commonwealth University and Visiting Scholar at the University of Virginia - PLOS Ecology Community
Stephan: A number of you have written me to ask me to run something that accurately explains the relationship between weather, particularly extreme weather, and climate change; it is a subject about which much nonsense has been written, particularly in the Rightwing media. A new report has just come out, and it is the most authoritative I have seen.
NOAA explaining extreme events from a climate perspective 2015 press conference at the AGU Fall Meeting on Thrusday, December 15, 2016. Participants include Stephanie Herring (NOAA), Martin Hoerling (NOAA), Friederike Otto (Oxford University), and Jeff Rosenfeld (AMS).
The report focuses on 26 peer-reviewed research papers from 116 scientists in 18 counties that highlight extreme weather events across five continents and two oceans from 2015. Using combinations of historical data, trend analysis, and models, this collection of papers seek to determine how each event was […]
Stephan: If you are the parent of a millennial you may already be familiar with this trend, and it is a significant one. If you are not such a parent it may come as a surprise. As I read it, and as I see it in light of other recent research I have published, it looks like a major social realignment. In poor nations it is quite typical to have multiple generations living in the same house hold, and this is but one more sign that America is becoming such a nation.
Pity both parents and the American housing market: Millennials are moving back home with their folks — and they aren’t moving out.
Almost 40 percent of young adults lived with their parents, step-parents, grandparents and other relatives last year, or the highest point in 75 years, according to data from real estate analytics company Trulia. The only time in U.S. history when the share has been higher was in 1940, when the U.S. economy was regaining its footing from the Great Depression and the year prior to the country’s entry into World War II.
The number of millennials who fail to leave the nest has been climbing for the past 10 years, with the trend starting shortly before the Great Recession of 2008 but accelerating during the downturn and the recovery. The phenomenon is tied to a few factors, ranging from society shifts to economic headwinds. For one, Americans are delaying marriage and starting families. But the bigger issue may be the triple whammy of low wages, student debt and rapidly escalating rents.
“Even though unemployment rates have decreased and the economy is picking up, we know wages are stagnant, so this will impact […]
Melody Petersen, Reporter - The Raw Story/The Los Angeles Times
Stephan: The naked scumbaggery of the Phamaceutical Industry, its slavering naked greed to make profit, and screw patients; well, the hits just keep coming. Here is the latest based on a just release Senate committee report. How is it that the rest of the developed world seems able to control the cost of medicines but the U.S. cannot? The answer: Corruption, of course, and a system of laws that completely favor corporate profit over social wellbeing. It is yet another negative proof of the Theorem of Wellbeing.
Credit: Shutterstock
A U.S. Senate committee detailed in an investigative report Wednesday how drug companies were exploiting the market by acquiring decades-old crucial medicines and suddenly raising their prices astronomically.
“We must work to stop the bad actors who are driving up the prices of drugs that they did nothing to develop at the expense of patients just because, as one executive essentially said, ‘because I can,’” said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, who chairs the Senate Aging Committee.
Over the last year, the committee investigated four drug companies, which it said had all used a similar business model that included egregious price hikes to maximize profits.
Here are some of the key findings in the committee’s 131-page report on those companies, which included Turing Pharmaceuticals, Retrophin Inc., Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and Rodelis Therapeutics.
—The companies raised prices — not to fund research to discover new drugs — but to boost profits for executives and investors. In essence, they operated more like hedge funds than traditional pharmaceutical companies.
Turing, headed by executive Martin Shkreli, bought Daraprim, a […]
Stephan: Here is the latest on North Carolina, and it is a tragic story. It is my belief that North Carolina is being used as a laboratory by the White Supremacist Theocratic Right to work out a strategy combining gerrymandering and voter suppression to assure the continued dominance of the Republican Party -- read racist Theocratic Rightist Whites -- in Red value states.
Note also the blatant double dealing.
I predict you will see variants of these same themes cropping up in other Red value states. What is interesting to me is that this trend is an example of racism trumping corporate interests. The bathroom bill HB2 has already cost the state untold millions, and I don't think the Rightists care, because what is really important to them is the continued dominance of "christian" Whites, particularly White males. Remember the four meta-trends I have outlined. North Carolina is an early adopter, and is being watched by Whites with similar views around the country. Wait and see.
North Carolina Senate
North Carolina lawmakers on Wednesday failed to reach a deal to repeal a divisive and costly law restricting protections for transgender people, ending a daylong special session without coming to agreement on anything.
After the North Carolina House adjourned without making a decision, the state’s Senate voted down the motion to repeal the controversial so-called “bathroom bill.”
That means no end in sight for a crisis that has already helped oust the sitting governor and triggered a boycott of the state by businesses, performers and sports leagues that has cost North Carolina tens of millions of dollars.
Lawmakers walked away after hours of debate in public and behind closed doors with flocks of protesters crowding the statehouse, most of them seeking the law, known as House Bill 2 or HB2, to be killed off. Their day ended in disappointment.
As the debate in the North Carolina Senate began to spiral, the crowd reacted.
It’s official: solar became the cheapest source of new energy in lower-income countries this year, giving both companies and governments alike another reason to ditch coal and gas for renewables.
Pity both parents and the American housing market: Millennials are moving back home with their folks — and they aren’t moving out.
