[TheClimate.Vote] June 18, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News

Sun Jun 18 09:12:16 EDT 2017

/June 18, 2017/

*Tesla Moves Into Nevada As The State Enacts Progressive New Solar 
Policies 
<https://cleantechnica.com/2017/06/15/nevada-state-enacts-progressive-new-solar-policies/>*
Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval signed a handful of new solar and energy 
related bills today in Carson City to help the state pivot away from the 
anti-consumer, anti-solar net metering regulation that forced SolarCity 
out of the state in late 2015...
The bills were signed at the Tesla Energy warehouse in Las Vegas, which 
was no accident, as the sunny state of Nevada that is also home to the 
Tesla Gigafactory has tasted the jobs and economic value coming from 
Tesla's operations. As a result of that, Tesla lobbying (we presume), 
Tesla's popularity, and citizen demand for solar, Governor Sandoval made 
a wise and brand-savvy decision...
Specifically, Tesla will begin offering residential solar and storage 
products in the Reno and Las Vegas metro areas starting today. The new 
offerings Tesla shared include:
*Outright purchase*  -  Buy the system outright for the lowest cost over 
the life of the system and the shortest return on investment.
*Solar loan*  -  10 year or 20 year loan option that allows customers to 
finance systems over a period that keeps solar loan payments comparable 
to or lower than utility bills.
*Solar lease *-  A low, fixed monthly payment that allows system hosts 
to install solar and save money with none of the upfront investment.
With the signing of the bill, Tesla has kicked off the process of hiring 
workers to staff its Nevada operations, heading back up to "full scale," 
but clearly with an eye for growth too. Tesla anticipates creating 
hundreds of new jobs in the state as a direct result of the new 
legislation. In addition to staffing up solar installation operations in 
the state, it will also be expanding beyond its current Las Vegas 
headquarters and West Las Vegas warehouse, with new facilities coming to 
Reno and the greater Las Vegas area.
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/06/15/nevada-state-enacts-progressive-new-solar-policies/

*As Solar Pushes Electricity Prices Negative, 3 Solutions for 
California's Power Grid 
<https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14062017/solar-renewable-energy-negative-prices-california-power-grid-solutions>*
The state has a wealth of renewable energy midday, but it needs ways to 
meet the evening prime time demand as base-load power plants go offline.
BY LESLIE KAUFMAN, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS
For a time this spring in California, as the snow melted above 
hydroelectric dams, the sun shone on solar arrays, and the wind whipped 
through turbines, the state was confronted with both a blessing and a curse.
It arrived as an overwhelming flood of cheap, clean electricity. At 
times it drove wholesale prices below zero. And it has left grid 
operators in California, and in other parts of the country, wondering 
how to cope with the upending of power markets by abundant renewable energy.
California has led the pack in adding renewable energy to its grid. How 
it manages the challenges of energy over-abundance may determine whether 
other states follow in its clean energy footsteps...
The crux of the issue that arose this spring is that in the middle of 
some days, California produced so much renewable energy it drove 
wholesale electricity prices below zero - what's known as negative 
pricing...
California is on the storage issue like no one else. The state has 
nearly 4 gigawatts (4,000 megawatts) of pumped hydro energy storage, and 
it has promised to put in place 1.32 gigawatts of additional storage by 
2020 (more than existed in the entire global markets for solar battery 
storage in 2016)....
Yet for all the progress that has been made on the quality and capacity 
of battery storage, the Escondido facility built by AES still holds a 
mere 30 megawatts, enough to power 30,000 homes for four hours. That's a 
drop in the bucket of Southern California's energy needs....
Another solution is to get Californians to use energy outside of prime 
time.  Instead of running that load of laundry at 8 p.m., put it on a 
timer to start at 3 p.m. when the sun is still shining...
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14062017/solar-renewable-energy-negative-prices-california-power-grid-solutions

The long read:
*'A reckoning for our species': the philosopher prophet of the 
Anthropocene 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/15/timothy-morton-anthropocene-philosopher>*
Timothy Morton wants humanity to give up some of its core beliefs, from 
the fantasy that we can control the planet to the notion that we are 
'above' other beings. His ideas might sound weird, but they're catching 
on. By Alex Blasdel
Timothy Morton, was a fan of Björk. Her music, he told her, had been "a 
very deep influence on my way of thinking and life in general"...
Excerpts from Morton's correspondence with Bjork 
<http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/gallery/20196/1/bjork-s-letters-with-timothy-morton> 
were published as part of her 2015 retrospective at the Museum of Modern 
Art in New York.
Part of what makes Morton popular are his attacks on settled ways of 
thinking. His most frequently cited book, Ecology Without Nature 
<https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0674024346>, says we need to 
scrap the whole concept of "nature". He argues that a distinctive 
feature of our world is the presence of ginormous things he calls 
"hyperobjects" – such as global warming or the internet – that we tend 
to think of as abstract ideas because we can't get our heads around 
them, but that are nevertheless as real as hammers. He believes all 
beings are interdependent, and speculates that everything in the 
universe has a kind of consciousness, from algae and boulders to knives 
and forks. He asserts that human beings are cyborgs of a kind, since we 
are made up of all sorts of non-human components; he likes to point out 
that the very stuff that supposedly makes us us – our DNA – contains a 
significant amount of genetic material from viruses. He says that we're 
already ruled by a primitive artificial intelligence: industrial 
capitalism. At the same time, he believes that there are some "weird 
experiential chemicals" in consumerism that will help humanity prevent a 
full-blown ecological crisis....
Morton's theories might sound bizarre, but they are in tune with the 
most earth-shaking idea to emerge in the 21st century: that we are 
entering a new phase in the history of the planet – a phase that Morton 
and many others now call the "Anthropocene"....
Morton has noted that 75% of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at 
this very moment will still be there in half a millennium. That's 15 
generations away. It will take another 750 generations, or 25,000 years, 
for most of the those gases to be absorbed into the oceans...
Part of what's so uncomfortable about this is that our individual acts 
may be statistically and morally insignificant, but when you multiply 
them millions and billions of times – as they are performed by an entire 
species – they are a collective act of ecological destruction. Coral 
bleaching isn't just occurring over yonder, on the Great Barrier Reef; 
it's happening wherever you switch on the air conditioning. In short, 
Morton says, "everything is interconnected"...
Stanford students have started a popular podcast titled Generation 
Anthropocene, <http://www.genanthro.com/> and thousands of articles and 
books have been written on the subject, in fields ranging from economics 
to poetry...
Despite Morton's popularity, this isn't an uncommon response to his 
work. The Morton detractors with whom I spoke accused him of 
misunderstanding contemporary science, like quantum mechanics and set 
theory, and then claiming his distortions as support for his wild ideas. 
They shared a broad critique that reminded me of the sceptical adage, 
"If you open your mind too far, your brains will fall out." The slurry 
of interesting ideas in Morton's work doesn't hold together under 
scrutiny, they say. The philosopher Ray Brassier, who was once 
associated with OOO, has charged Morton and his blogging confrères with 
generating "an online orgy of stupidity".
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/15/timothy-morton-anthropocene-philosopher
- more-
*Hyperobjects and the End of Common Sense 
<http://contemporarycondition.blogspot.com/2010/03/hyperobjects-and-end-of-common-sense.html>*
Timothy Morton   U.C. Davis
In the liner notes to Stop Making Sense, Talking Heads frontman David 
Byrne wrote "Nuclear weapons could wipe out life on Earth, if used 
properly." The brilliant fake naivety of this seemingly obvious remark 
should make us pause. We have indeed created things that we can hardly 
understand, let alone control, let alone make sensible political 
decisions about. Sometimes it's good to have new words for these things, 
to remind you of how mind-blowing they are. So I'm going to introduce a 
new term: hyperobjects. Hyperobjects are phenomena such as radioactive 
materials and global warming. Hyperobjects stretch our ideas of time and 
space, since they far outlast most human time scales, or they're 
massively distributed in terrestrial space and so are unavailable to 
immediate experience. In this sense, hyperobjects are like those tubes 
of toothpaste that say they contain 10% extra: there's more to 
hyperobjects than ordinary objects.
http://contemporarycondition.blogspot.com/2010/03/hyperobjects-and-end-of-common-sense.html
- more -
*(audio) Bjork: "In Iceland We Can See The Melting Of The Glaciers" 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGxLgrrR4oU>*
Singer & activist Bjork tells Sky News that bureaucracy and greed hinder 
efforts to fight climate change
5:12 interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGxLgrrR4oU

*potholer54 Video Response to Bill Whittle's "Is climate change real?" 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7aZ6vqCk2E>*
20: minute video with sources
5:04 – 5:18 – The titles, authors and dates of these papers are ALL 
shown very clearly in the video. There is no need for me to repeat the 
titles, authors and dates here. If you have trouble reading the titles, 
autors and dates then you would be no better off trying to read them in 
this video description, where the letters are even smaller.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7aZ6vqCk2E

*(video) Why is it so hard to end fossil fuel subsidies? 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4356sIaGlU>*
Carbon Brief interviewed Shelagh Whitley at the Overseas Development 
Institute (ODI), London. Whitley is head of the climate and energy 
programme at the ODI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4356sIaGlU
- more-
*(video) Fossil fuel subsidies: Why do calculations vary? 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmB5CvS_Uts>*
Dr William Blyth is the director of Oxford Energy Associates, an 
independent energy consultancy company. Blyth is also an associate at 
Chatham House and Imperial College London. Oxford Energy Associates were 
asked to do a study for the Environmental Audit Committee, a 
parliamentary committee on UK subsidies, in 2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmB5CvS_Uts

*Donald Trump is handing the federal government over to fossil fuel 
interests
The appointments, the policies, the rhetoric  -  it is not subtle. 
<https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/6/13/15681498/trump-government-fossil-fuels>*
Updated by David Roberts at drvoxdavid@vox.com Jun 14, 2017, 7:56am EDT
...The love affair between Trump and fossil fuel companies has blossomed 
ever since. Recently, Kathleen Sgamma, president of the oil and gas 
trade group Western Energy Alliance, gushed to the New York Times, "not 
in our wildest dreams, never did we expect to get everything."..
..."Everything," in this case, denotes a long list of friendly 
appointments and regulatory rollbacks. For all its controversies, 
distractions, failures, and unfilled jobs, the Trump administration has 
been steady and true in its devotion to fossil fuel interests, giving 
them a greater presence inside executive agencies, stripping them of 
regulatory restraints, and proposing to defund their competitors.
There are some areas of policy where Trump faces friction from courts, 
Congress, or other elements of the conservative coalition. He has 
stumbled on health care, on his travel ban, and on foreign policy. But 
when it comes to environmental and energy policy, the coalition is 
aligned. All the party's most powerful and influential factions support 
a pro-fossil, anti-regulatory agenda; there is an extensive 
infrastructure of big money, think tanks, and lobbyists built to support 
it...
It's worth noting that a pro-fossil fuel, anti-regulatory approach is 
not particularly popular in the US, in either party. Majorities in every 
congressional district support limiting local pollution and carbon 
emissions from coal plants. Majorities in every Congressional district 
believe America's focus should turn toward wind and solar. Majorities in 
every state support the Paris climate agreement...
But the money and intensity on the GOP side support fossil fuels. And 
there is no faction on the right that cares enough about climate or 
environmental issues to prioritize them over the larger culture war. So 
there is no friction...
..The budget would also cut advanced nuclear energy research and 
research into carbon capture and sequestration. The Office of Energy 
Efficiency and Renewable Energy would be slashed by more than half...
Perhaps most tellingly, the budget would eliminate EPA's Greenhouse Gas 
Reporting Program, a relatively inexpensive ($8 million) program that 
tracks carbon emissions from the nation's 8,000 largest industrial 
polluters...
BP contributed $500,000 to Trump's inauguration and spent $1.7 million 
in the first three months of the year lobbying on "issues related to 
arctic oil and gas development."..
Now Trump has signed an executive order expanding offshore drilling in 
the Arctic and Atlantic oceans....
Kelcy Warren, the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind 
the Dakota Access Pipeline, personally contributed $250,000 to Trump's 
inauguration. In the first three months of the year, his company spent 
$270,00 lobbying on "pipeline related issues."
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/6/13/15681498/trump-government-fossil-fuels

*This Day in Climate History June 18, 2005 
<http://www.bradshow.com/Archives/BradShow_061805_Hour4_24k.mp3>   from 
D.R. Tucker*
Investigative journalist Brad Friedman interviews White House 
whistleblower Rick Piltz regarding the Bush Administration's felony 
assault on science.
http://www.bradshow.com/Archives/BradShow_061805_Hour1_24k.mp3
http://www.bradshow.com/Archives/BradShow_061805_Hour4_24k.mp3
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