Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019
JOE ROMM, - Think Progress
Stephan: In spite of the tens of millions the carbon industries are spending to buy the government policies they want, all with total support from Trump and his administration, the carbon industries are dying. Here is a good assessment of where things stand, and I consider it to be good news.
PALM SPRINGS, CA – Giant wind turbines are powered by strong winds in front of solar panels on March 27, 2013 in Palm Springs, California. According to reports, California continues to lead the nation in green technology and has the lowest greenhouse gas emissions per capita, even with a growing economy and population. (
Credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty
The rapidly dropping cost of renewable energy has upended energy economics in recent years, with new solar and wind plants now significantly cheaper than coal power.
But new research shows another major change is afoot: The cost of batteries has been declining so unexpectedly rapidly that renewables plus battery storage are now cheaper than even natural gas plants in many applications, according to a report released this week by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).
BNEF analyzed pricing data from almost 7,000 power projects in 46 countries that span 20 energy technologies, including coal, gas, nuclear, battery storage, solar photovoltaics (PV), and wind.
They report that electricity prices “for onshore wind, solar PV and offshore wind have […]
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Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019
Leyland Cecco, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Canada is providing the world an example of what happens when a nation does not seriously address the use of carbon energy, and it is not a happy picture.
The Snowy mountain wildfire, visible from Cawston, British Columbia, on 2 August 2018.
Credit: Canadian Press/REX/Shutterstock
Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, a landmark government report has found, warning that drastic action is the only way to avoid catastrophic outcomes. (emphasis added)
“The science is clear – Canada’s climate is warming more rapidly than the global average, and this level of warming effectively cannot be changed,” Nancy Hamzawi, assistant deputy minister for science and technology at Environment and Climate Change Canada, told reporters on Monday.
The report, released late on Monday by Environment and Climate Change Canada, paints a grim picture of Canada’s future, in which deadly heatwaves and heavy rainstorms become a common occurrence. Forty-three government scientists and academics authored the peer-reviewed report.
While global temperatures have increased 0.8C since 1948, Canada has seen an increase of 1.7C – more than double the global average.
And in the Arctic, the warming is happening at a much faster rate of 2.3C, […]
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Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019
Stephan: I have just spent the last several days with academics listening to them talk about the effect making money the first priority is having on American universities and colleges. As with the illness profit system, the privatization of prisons, and child concentration camps it is a sad and tragic story. Here is a good assessment of what is going on.
Graduating seniors line up to receive their diplomas during Commencement at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, U.S., May 26, 2017.
Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder
The price of college is breaking America. At a moment when Hollywood celebrities and private equity titans have allegedly been spending hundreds of thousands in bribes to get their children into elite schools, it seems quaint to recall that higher learning is supposed to be an engine of social mobility. Today, the country’s best colleges are an overpriced gated community whose benefits accrue mostly to the wealthy. At 38 colleges, including Yale, Princeton, Brown and Penn, there are more students from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60 percent.
Tuition prices aren’t the only reason for this, but they’re a major one. Public university tuition has doubled in the last two decades, tripled in the last three. Prestige-hungry universities admit large numbers of students who can pay ever-increasing fees and only a relative handful of low-income students. The U.S. now has more student loan debt than credit card debt—upward […]
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Lefteris Karagiannopoulos and Terje Solsvik , - Reuters
Stephan: Norway is a country where social wellbeing is a guiding principle for government, in contrast to the United States where profit is the only social priority. As a result Norway has a healthy middle-class that on average has a higher income than their American peers, lower taxes, universal single-payer healthcare, and free or modestly priced education K through university. Is it surprising then that the people of Norway are embracing non-carbon powered transportation? Consider: "Cars that rely solely on internal combustion engines with no hybrid electric unit had a market share of only 22.7 percent in March, the lowest on record."
This is what a healthy democracy looks like, and frankly I am envious.
Norwegian charging station
OSLO, NORWAY — Almost 60 percent of all new cars sold in Norway in March were fully electric, the Norwegian Road Federation (NRF) said on Monday, a global record as the country seeks to end fossil-fueled vehicles sales by 2025.
Exempting battery engines from taxes imposed on diesel and petrol cars has upended Norway’s auto market, elevating brands like Tesla and Nissan, with its Leaf model, while hurting sales of Toyota, Daimler and others.
In 2018, Norway’s fully electric car sales rose to a record 31.2 percent market share from 20.8 percent in 2017, far ahead of any other nation, and buyers had to wait as producers struggled to keep up with demand.
The surge of electric cars to a 58.4 percent market share in March came as Tesla ramped up delivery of its mid-sized Model 3, which retails from 442,000 crowns ($51,400), while Audi began deliveries of its 652,000-crowns e-tron sports utility vehicle.
The sales figures consolidate Norway’s global lead in electric car sales per capita, part of an attempt by Western […]
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Stephan: For over a decade I have been telling my readers that there are going to be three internal migrations in the United States: Away from the coasts because of searise, out of the Southwest because of heat and lack of water, and out of the central states because of flooding and other catastrophic climate events like tornadoes. It's all happening, and it is going to get worse, much worse.
Here is what the short-term flooding future looks like. If you live in these states plan accordingly.
Credit: NOAA
The record-breaking flooding disaster in the Midwest is just beginning.
On Thursday, the National Weather Service issued its annual spring flood outlook, and it is downright biblical. By the end of May, parts of 25 states — nearly two-thirds of the country — could see flooding severe enough to cause damage.
Pretty much every major body of water east of the Rockies is at elevated risk of flooding in the coming months, including the Mississippi, the Red River of the North, the Great Lakes, the eastern Missouri River, the lower Ohio, the lower Cumberland, and the Tennessee River basins.
“This is shaping up to be a potentially unprecedented flood season, with more than 200 million people at risk for flooding in their communities,” said Ed Clark, director of NOAA’s National Water Center, in a press release. That represents about 60 percent of all Americans.
Across the Midwest, the recent floods have already caused an estimated $3 billion in damages — a total that will surely rise. Extremely heavy snowfall in the upper Midwest this winter, combined with […]
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