Here is some excellent good news about what seems to be the emerging next generation of solar technology.
Credit: Teerapong Kungaed / Getty
The sight of solar panels installed on rooftops and large energy farms has become commonplace in many regions around the world. Even in the gray and rainy UK, solar power is becoming a major player in electricity generation.
This surge in solar is fueled by two key developments. First, scientists, engineers, and those in industry are learning how to make solar panels by the billions. Every fabrication step is meticulously optimized to produce them very cheaply. The second and most significant is the relentless increase in the panels’ power conversion efficiency—a measure of how much sunlight can be transformed into electricity.
The higher the efficiency of solar panels, the cheaper the electricity. This might make you wonder: Just how efficient can we expect solar energy to become? And will it make a dent in our energy bills?
Commercially available solar panels today convert about 20 to 22 percent of sunlight into electrical power. However, new research […]
This is sort of semi-good news because it reports that corporations are slowly beginning to accept and operate on the need to exit the carbon power era. Not fast enough, but at least in the right direction.
In an aerial view, solar panels are seen at MCE Solar One solar farm in Richmond, California. Getty
This Climate Week, I did something crazy. In the middle of a packed week of panels, roundtables, and interviews in New York, I hopped on a plane across the country and spent a day at the MINExpo conference in Las Vegas for a forthcoming story. In the giant halls, alongside trucks the size of jet planes, companies gathered at the mining equipment conference promised to decrease their customers’ carbon footprints and allow them to operate their mines more sustainably.
The public narrative around private sector climate action is one of deep skepticism. Many advocates have decried it as greenwashing, claiming that companies are using climate goals as a branding exercise. Many companies have pulled back their commitments, saying they no longer feel they are feasible. And businesses have grown reluctant to talk about their environmental work—fearful that it might cause backlash in conservative states and with a potential future Republican […]
Further insights into how pseudo-Christians, aided by oligarchs, are trying to turn public education into a profit making indoctrination system. Americans are already amongst the least literate, least numerate populations in the developed world, and many have no idea how the government works, and 23% can’t even name the three branches of government.
Students in class Credit: Shutterstock
The effort to get school vouchers approved nationwide has a long and varied history, but Cowen’s book posits that it is essentially a Christian Nationalist attempt at undermining public education as we know it.
Cowen, whose career as an education researcher in the early 2000s began with the expectation that vouchers, which allow public tax dollars for education to be spent for private school tuition, would ultimately benefit students. However, the reality that Cowen documents in the book turned out to be almost the exact opposite.
Starting in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision which ordered an end to segregated public education, and ending with the rise of the conservative Moms for Liberty – a vocal opponent of LGBTQ+ rights – and Project 2025, an authoritarian blueprint offering detailed plans to broadly enhance executive authority during a second Trump term, Cowen describes the arc […]
Eleanor Klibanoff, Women's Health Reporter | Investigative Reporter - The Texas Tribune
Stephan:
Christofascists control Texas, and they clearly don’t give a damn about the health and wellbeing of the people of Texas as this article describes. One has to ask: Why did the voters of Texas elect such unfeeling politicians who care so little for the wellbeing of the people of their state? It is clearly a cause and effect situation. What makes it nationally significant is that if traitor Trump wins, and MAGAt Republicans control the Senate and House this is the kind of healthcare we may see nationally.
Micaela Hoops with her children at their home in Sherman. Hoops’ three sons lost insurance after she misunderstood the state’s deadline and failed to submit their renewal for the first time in three years. When the North Texas mother discovered her error, she frantically reapplied, putting her children at the back of an ever-lengthening waitlist. Credit: Danielle Villasana for ProPublica and the Texas Tribune
For three years during the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government gave Texas and other states billions of dollars in exchange for their promise not to exacerbate the public health crisis by kicking people off Medicaid.
When that agreement ended last year, Texas moved swiftly, kicking off more people faster than any other state.
Officials acknowledged some errors after they stripped Medicaid coverage from more than 2 million people, most of them children. Some people who believe they were wrongly removed are desperately trying to get back on the state and federally funded health care program, adding to a backlog of more than 200,000 applicants. A ProPublica and Texas Tribune review of dozens of public […]
Jessica Corbett, Senior Editor and Staff Writer - Common Dreams
Stephan:
I think history is going to record President Biden as an international failure because of his support of Netanyahu and the American supply to Israel of the bombs, missiles, and bullets that have killed tens of thousands of innocent Muslim men, women, and children. Also because of his paltry support of Ukraine in its war against Putin’s invasion. I am sorry to say I will be glad to see him gone, and I hope we will see better from Harris.
Most diplomats got up and walked out as Netanyahu began his talk at the UN.
A large number of diplomats and other officials walked out of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Friday as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to defend his nation’s slaughter of more than 41,000 people in the Gaza Strip during the past year and over 700 in Lebanon this week.
Journalists and critics of the “global pariah” shared photos and videos of people filing out of the hall before Netanyahu’s address—which came just a day after 25 anti-genocide protesters were arrested for blocking his motorcade in Manhattan.
While there was some audience applause from the sparsely populated room on Friday, Al Jazeera Arabic’s Rami Ayari explained that “the people you hear cheering the PM during the speech are in the gallery who he brought for that purpose.”
Council on American-Islamic Relations national executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement that “as the far-right, openly racist Israeli government […]
In talking with several people I have realized they don’t really understand how tariffs work and who bears the cost. So I searched out an article that explains tariffs in non-academic terms. As you will see as you read it traitor Trump doesn’t have a clue how tariffs work, and just lies over and over to Americans about what would happen if he imposed tariffs. The main headline is: you and I would pay the cost.
Why it matters: Trump has touted tariffs as a miraculous cure to just about every domestic and international strain, from war to child care to high grocery prices. But Trump also consistently claims tariffs are paid by countries exporting to the U.S., which isn’t actually how they work.
State of play: Trump has vowed to implement massive, sweeping tariffs — while Vice President Kamala Harris has pointed to warnings from economists that they would reawaken inflation.
Still, as Trump likes to point out, President Biden did keep his China tariffs in place, and Harris hasn’t said she’d lift them.
The big picture: Trump is right that tariffs can raise revenue for the governments imposing them.
But he’s wrong when he claims they only punish manufacturers abroad. They can also hurt U.S. companies and consumers.
What is a tariff?
A tariff is a form of tax on imported goods, designed to protect domestic companies […]
