And a bit about climate too - first from the UK Guardian:
World has three years left to stop dangerous climate change, warn experts
Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres among signatories of letter warning that the next three years will be crucial to stopping the worst effects of global warming.
Avoiding dangerous levels of climate change is still just about possible, but will require unprecedented effort and coordination from governments, businesses, citizens and scientists in the next three years, a group of prominent experts has warned.
Warnings over global warming have picked up pace in recent months, even as the political environment has grown chilly with Donald Trump’s formal announcement of the US’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement. This year’s weather has beaten high temperature records in some regions, and 2014, 2015 and 2016 were the hottest years on record.
A major point here - the claim of hottest year is from NASA (PDF). Not the 18,000 people who work for NASA, we are talking about one very small agency - the Goddard Institute for Space Studies which has about 140 staff of which, only about 30 are full-time employees of NASA; the rest are from nearby Columbia University or are visiting scientists or interns. This is a very partisan institution. Its founder was James Hansen who was fired because he got involved in more political issues than scientific ones. He had a narrative of global warming to pursue and he did it. Their data is cherry-picked and does not use atmospheric data from the many satellites. These are a lot more accurate and all of them show a 19+ year decline in atmospheric temperatures - concurring with the overall decline in output from our Sun. The data that GISS uses is gathered at the surface and subject to the Urban Heat Island effect.
The Guardian article leads with a photo of Ms. Figueres:
What a harpy - such condescension in her face. Bow down before me - I am your better.
Now, two on alt.energy.
First - from the Tulsa, OK Tulsa World:
Frank Keating: I signed wind industry tax breaks, and I was wrong
In 2001, when I served as governor of Oklahoma, I signed legislation creating the Zero Emissions Tax Credit for industrial wind energy. The tax credit was designed to give a jump-start to a wind industry in its infancy in Oklahoma at the time. It was sold to us as a low-cost way to broaden our already robust energy and economic development program. It was supposed to create jobs and develop a more prosperous future for Oklahoma.
Signing this legislation was simply a mistake. What was promised to cost the state less than $2 million annually when I was in office has soared to $113 million for the 2014 tax year and is expected to cost billions in the future. Wind farms average 10 percent to 13 permanent jobs, which hardly lives up to the promised employment growth.
Because the tax credits weren’t limited or capped, the Zero Emissions Tax Credit has warped into a scam costing taxpayers millions to the detriment of other publicly funded services. In 2014, the credits became directly refundable, meaning the state writes wind companies checks for 85 percent of the value of each credit. That’s essentially a blank check funded by taxpayers that goes to multibillion-dollar corporations based outside of Oklahoma and mostly located in foreign countries. It’s the worst kind of corporate handout.
Emh]phasis mine - this is not about manufacturing jobs - the two big turbine companies are Vestas (Denmark) and Siemans (Germany) - here is a list of all of the manufacturers and only a handful are based in the USA.
Second - some good news from The Daily Caller:
The Western US’s Largest Coal Plant Has A ‘Fighting Chance’ Of Survival
Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke hailed the Navajo Nation’s ratification of a new lease with operators of the largest coal-fired power plant in the western U.S., staving off its immediate decommissioning.
Zinke said the action gave Navajo and Hopi workers a “fighting chance” to keep their jobs at the coal plant and the mine that supplies it.
Navajo Nation ratified a lease agreement with operators of the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) Tuesday to extend power plant and mining operations through 2019. This gives the Department of the Interior, which co-owns the plant, and other stakeholders time to find ways to keep the NGS viable.
“Since the first weeks of the Trump Administration, one of Interior’s top priorities has been to roll up our sleeves with diverse stakeholders in search of an economic path forward to extend NGS and Kayenta Mine operations after 2019,” Zinke said in a statement.
Lulu and I saw this plant during our Southwest trip two years ago. They were not giving tours of the plant but we drove around it and visited the mine 80 miles away - the whole operation is clean, no ash, no odor, no visible color to the stack gasses - very complete combustion and it provides solid baseload power to most of Arizona and Nevada.
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