2014 was hotter than 1998. 2015 data in yet?

You're missing my point.There will always be droughts, man made or otherwise. Cheap, reliable, and plentiful energy has been the best way to mitigate their effects - not stopping our civilizations dead in their tracks.And so far, only fossil fuels have been shown capable of providing this cheap, reliable, and plentiful energy. I've opened numerous doors for you and others to walk through and show your evidence that renewables could instead provide this cheap, reliable, and plentiful energy. Yet not once has any effort been made to demonstrate this. I WANT CLEAN, LOW-COST, LESS-RISKY ENERGY! But I also want energy that is affordable, reliable, and in good supply because that is what makes my life so damn good and will continue to make all of our lives so damn good.Now this is easy, RAZD, to win me over all you have to do is show that renewables can take the place of fossil fuels in providing cheap, reliable, and plentiful energy and I'll be all in.Until then I'm going to stick my money where the energy is. You can't magically create water to 'alleviate a drought'. What you can do is use cheap, reliable, and plentiful energy to grow food elsewhere, and use that same cheap, reliable, and plentiful energy to transport that food where the drought is so it doesn't turn into a famine - as droughts always have before humans started using fossil fuels to provide themselves with cheap, reliable, and plentiful energy.We need cheap, reliable, and plentiful energy to survive on this unforgiving rock. If renewables can provide that, amazing! But if not, the evidence suggests we are better off continuing to get it from fossil fuels than to give it up.

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Now this is easy, RAZD, to win me over all you have to do is show that renewables can take the place of fossil fuels in providing cheap, reliable, and plentiful energy and I'll be all in.

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Hawaii uses fossil fuels for power plants and their bill usually is through the roof.

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The 10 states with the highest electricity prices | Utility Dive

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That would be Hawaii. The state's electricity prices the highest in the U.S. are nearly three times higher than the national average of $0.1284 per kilowatt-hour.

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Hawaii's electricity price of $0.37 per kilowatt-hour equates to a $334 monthly electricity bill for the average consumer, according to calculations based on EIA data. That comes out to more than $4,000 per year spent on electricity.

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But why Hawaii of all places, you ask? Much like the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Puerto Rico and Guam, the islands largely rely on expensive oil imports to fuel electricity generation.

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One caution. This was an August 2014 article.The average bill for solar plants in the USA (if presently built) would be around 11-12 cents per kilowatt hour.Hawaii doesn't have very many coal plants btw.This might give you an idea Jon.

It gives me the same idea I've always had: there are specific instances where renewables might be preferable, such as remote, sunny islands where cheaper alternatives are in short supply or missing altogether.Hawai'i sounds like a great place to run on solar - which really does make one wonder why it doesn't. But that doesn't have much to do with places like Maryland. Speaking of which, I think I'm still waiting on those figures from you to show how Maryland can meet all their energy needs with just a few square miles of solar panels.What's stopping Maryland? For that matter, what's stopping sunny Hawai'i?

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Solar power cheaper than natural gas, coal, and nuclear power in Texas!
March 14, 2014
Ah, remember when solar power was expensive. You know, just a couple years ago. Things change fast, don't they?

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For example, in 2009, Austin Energy agreed to pay 16.5 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for electricity from a solar power plant (via a 25-year power purchase agreement, or PPA). Just 5 years later, it is going to pay a little less than 5 cents per kWh for electricity from a couple of new solar power plants (again, via a PPA).

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To put that into a little perspective, Austin Energy estimates that it could have paid 7 cents per kWh for electricity from a natural gas power plant, 10 cents per kWh from a coal power plant, and 13 cents per kWh from a nuclear power plant.

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From a wind power plant, the estimate was 2.8/kWh to 3.8/kWh. However, there's something to highlight regarding solar power. Electricity markets work by the same supply and demand principles as other markets (to an extent). As supply goes up, electricity price falls. And as demand goes up, electricity price rises. Electricity demand (especially in the South) is greatest around the middle of the day, which makes electricity prices highest at that time. The fact that solar, which produces electricity at these peak demand times, is available for 5/kWh is pretty huge.

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Now, you might be wondering how much subsidies come into play here. There are no Texas subsidies for solar that help with this project, but there is the federal investment tax credit (ITC). Without the ITC, the cost of electricity in this deal is estimated to be 8/kWh, just 1/kWh more than the estimate for natural gas. However, remember that pollution externalities are not included in the price of natural gas (but should be), and because of the price volatility of this fossil fuel, natural is a much riskier investment.

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A couple final points to note: 1) the DOE projected that solar would get below 6/kWh by 2020, and 2) Austin Energy was initially seeking bids for solar power from a power plant or power plants totaling 50 megawatts of capacity, but after receiving over 30 proposals, including the winning proposal from SunEdison, it increased the size to 150 megawatts.

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Overall, this is big news for the solar industry. It's increasingly safe to say that solar power is now mainstream.
Teen Inventor Creates a Coffee Mug to Power Your Gadgets

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Here is a shocking article by the conservative Forbes!

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Solar Power To Become Cheapest Source Of Energy In Many Regions By 2025, German Experts Say
Mar 31, 2015 @ 05:14 AM
Solar power still amounts for a small share of net electricity generation around the world. In the USA, for instance, as of December 2014 it was responsible for just 0.45% of the total electricity produced.

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Things are changing quite quickly, however, and if the German think tank Agora Energiewende is right, faster than expected.

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The main obstacle to a more widespread adoption of photovoltaic so far, has been cost: solar used to be very expensive compared to coal or gas, but, according to Agora — that recently commissioned a study on the subject to the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems — this is no longer true.

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Solar power — researchers say — thanks to technological advancements, is already cost-effective in some sunny regions: in Dubai, a long-term power purchase contract was signed recently for 5 cents per kilowatt hour. Projects under construction in Brazil, Uruguay and other countries are reported to produce at costs below 7 ct/KWh.

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By comparison, electricity from new coal and gas-fired plants costs between 5 and 10 cents per kilowatt hour. And in Germany, right now, large solar plants deliver power for less than 9 cents, compared to as much as 11 cents from nuclear.

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By 2025, the report says, the cost of producing power in central and southern Europe will have declined to between 4 and 6 cents per kilowatt hour, and by 2050 to as low as 2 to 4 cents, making it the cheapest source of energy in many parts of the world.

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These forecasts seem to contradict several other studies which maintain that solar will give only a small contribution of solar power to future national, regional or global power systems, something that researchers believe can easily be explained by the use of outdated cost estimates for solar photovoltaics.
Solar Power To Become Cheapest Source Of Energy In Many Regions By 2025, German Experts Say

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Forbes seems to understand that they have been low-balling solar over the years, so they are presenting an optimistic view.

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April 13th, 2015
Solar prices are still dropping very rapidly. Below, we’re going to look at best current prices, as they should be representative of what is possible and even likely in the near future. One can find more expensive examples, but the market will not support the more expensive, it will continue to seek out the least expensive.

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In Austin, a SunEdison power plant won a PPA to sell Austin Energy electricity for less than 5/kWh. Federal subsidy would come to ~ 2/kWh, which is much lower than then the estimated 9—27/kWh in health costs that coal brings us, and I would presume less than the health and environmental costs of natural gas (but I haven’t seen a thorough analysis on that) and that’s not even taking into account their own subsidies. (Note that Austin Energy has now designated solar power as its default energy generation method through 2024.)

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In New Mexico, in 2013, a First Solar* power plant won a PPA with a price of 5.8/kWh, while new coal was going for 10—14/kWh. That 5.8/kWh price doesn’t take into account ~4.7/kWh of subsidies, but, again, the coal price doesn’t take into account 9—27/kWh in health costs.

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In Dubai (in the UAE), ACWA Power bid just 5.98/kWh to provide electricity from a solar power to the Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (DEWA) without subsidy. That was a world record low bid, but even if ACWA Power didn’t exist, the record would have been broken by the second-lowest bid, which was 6.13/kWh and came from Fotowatio Renewables & Saudi Abdul Latif Jameel Energy. Both bids came well below the average price of electricity from natural gas in the region, 9/kWh.

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Lastly, while we didn’t get to see any numbers on a Minnesota case, a judge ruled that a solar power plant there offered a better deal for ratepayers than several competing natural gas power plants.
http://cleantechnica.com/...n-lower-fossil-fuel-power-prices

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Articles have hyper links (especially the last one)

GoogleLets take the top hit.

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The United States Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that the solar energy resource in a 100-square-mile (259-square-kilometer) area of Nevada could supply the United States with all its electricity. We're talking 800 gigawatts of power, and that's using modestly efficient commercial PV modules. Break all that down and each state would only need to devote 17 x 17 miles (27 x 27 kilometers) of solar cells (not all states are quite as sunny as Nevada). Where would all that land come from in each state? The DOE points to the country's estimated 5 million acres (2.02 million hectares) of abandoned industrial sites as a potential candidate that could contribute a whopping 90 percent of U.S. electrical consumption.

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5 Myths About Renewable Energy | HowStuffWorks

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That would bring down the price of gas (which Jon holds to be sacred just for the sake of being a fossil fuel) to a multi decade low - due to (much!)reduced demand. John keeps talking about how stable gas is (actually one always knows the price of electricity for a given solar-plant from very the day it's built UNLIKE the fossil fuel power-plants we are stuck with). How valuable is gas? Its sucks when it comes to power plants. It really sucks because we are stuck with an expensive plant that can't just be shut down. Solar is cheap but (any)plants are expensive to build, and once we build a crappy coal or natural gas plant, it becomes necessary to keep feeding the beast (the economical decision would be to never build them to start with but its too late once the darn things are built). Keep building fossil fuel powered plants and keep the energy companies happily drilling and mining for ever more expensive to extract sources.If not for well-funded energy company propaganda, we would know that solar-powered plants, at the very least, will reduce the price of gas for an automobile, since the gas would be available for cars that would otherwise be used in gas-fired plants. Granted the energy barons would reduce production as much as possible to keep prices as high as possible.Our real skepticism of solar should be a fear that corrupt forces could limit its deployment to keep energy scarce and expensive (talk about "doing with less", talk about that!), but that would require us to face real issues - heaven forbid! The fossil fuel propagandists wouldn't have anything of THAT.Artificial scarcity is a powerful force.Respect the power of artifice.

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There Are Now More Solar Jobs In America Than Oil Jobs

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Unfortunately, oil still pays better.
01/12/2016 05:00 am ET

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Solar is the energy employer of the future -- or at least that's how the numbers look today.

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A new report on the state of the solar industry out Tuesday from the nonprofit Solar Foundation shows that the number of jobs in the United States in the solar industry outpaced those in the oil and gas industries for the first time ever.

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As of November 2015 there were almost 209,000 people who worked in the solar industry, 90 percent of whom only work on solar-related projects, according to the report.

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There were only about 185,000 people working in oil and gas in the United States in December 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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The oil industry has had a rough 18 months, as the price of oil slid from more than $100 a barrel in the spring of 2014 to just over $30 a barrel in recent weeks. The low price has caused layoffs in what had been a robust and growing shale oil extraction business.

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The solar industry, meanwhile, continues to grow as the technology becomes cheaper, making it a better deal for the average household. The Solar Foundation's report also shows how the price of installed solar panels continue to drop:

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The bulk of the solar jobs seem to be coming from the installation of solar panels, with some growth in development and sales. Manufacturing actually declined a bit. According to the report, that's probably because another Silicon Valley solar company, QBotix, shut down back in September.

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MORE
There Are Now More Solar Jobs In America Than Oil Extraction Jobs | HuffPost Impact?

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Normally, I would consider it concerning that an industry requires so many jobs (considering the million & millions of elderly humans living in such a miserable state with a severe lack of care - not to mention the millions of dogs put to death in these disgusting United States, one can argue we needs all the available hands directed toward them); productivity improvements would/should be called for. But, the wealth concentration toward the top - as in the fossil-fuel industry - is far less productive, so money going to lower-income individuals will be put back into the economy much quicker, meaning more (indirect) jobs created.If jobs are the goal (and economic commentators usually make the natural gas field layoffs into an issue more important than the benefit of lower energy prices), then the solar industry contributes to a "virtuous cycle". 1% of energy produced (i.e. solar) creates more jobs than the 80% (of U.S. energy produced) fossil fuel industry.Make of it what you want. I'm not sure myself.It is interesting. Because it is real.Always consider the real.Better than constantly being tricked into looking at smokescreens as we humans are all, typically, one giant (collective) many membered body of a (single) deer, caught looking into whatever multitude of headlights happen to be targeted toward our hapless selves.Again, make of it...Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

That's exactly what "more with less" means. The fact that a steamship is physically bigger than a spacecraft is irrelevant. It isn't the destination that counts; it's the reason for the trip. Circumnavigation by ship allows you to make multiple stops for multiple reasons along the way. it could be said that circumnavigation by steamship is doing more than mere orbiting - and with less. That might be better but a steamship is still more flexible - i.e. it can do more. Of course not. Nobody in their right mind would measure resources by mass.

Take this "net metering" crap cry from the "right" (no offense to the multitude on the political right who don't swallow the b.s. , as I'm sure they are legion) wing publications.

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The Energy Spectator

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SolarCity’s Silver Spoon

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo notwithstanding, solar companies are starting to lose their subsidies.
1.4.16
Smaller
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Last week, Nevada became the latest state to roll back its net-metering electricity scam, as the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) calls it. As a result, SolarCity reacted by announcing that it would cease sales and installations in the state. Back in 2013, with great fanfare, SolarCity announced that it was coming to Nevada after securing incentives worth up to $1.2 million from the state’s Governor’s Office of Economic Development, reported the Silicon Valley Business Journal. As in New York, SolarCity claimed it would create hundreds of jobs near Las Vegas. But times have changed.

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Nevada is just one of many states considering changes to the subsidies offered to encourage rooftop solar installations. Arizona already made the change,
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What states have found is that the increasing implementation of solar results in higher costs for non-solar customers who as the WSJ states, tend to be lower income.

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The net-metering policies are at the center of the debate. In short, net metering compensates solar customers for the excess solar power they generate. The problem is that these individual generators get paid retail for the power, rather than the wholesale rate utilities pay for typical power supplies. As a result, customers with solar panels can completely avoid paying the utility even though they still use power, transmission lines, and services from the company. States are seeing costs shifted from solar customers to those who can least afford it. As a result, several states, including Nevada, California, and Washington, have mandated policy changes. Generally, the changes reduce the payment to wholesale and add a grid connection fee or demand fee.

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The WSJ called net metering regressive political income redistribution in support of a putatively progressive cause. Frank O’Sullivan, director of research and analysis at MIT Energy Initiative, explains it: Net metering, in its most plain, vanilla form, is certainly a subsidy to rooftop solar owners. Obviously there has to be a cost transfer to others who don’t have solar on their roofs.
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It is the state and federal incentives, not free markets, which have created a burgeoning solar industry

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Page not found - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

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They sure spend a ton of energy complaining about an industry that is at 1% in total American energy produced.Understand the issue here ladies and gentlemen.This is an issue of PRODUCED energy by solar panels - specifically energy produced during peak hours of energy consumption. (so much for fossil fuel propagandists expressing such "concern" about other "inferior" sources - namely wind - not being able to produce energy when "it is needed most"; but these at-will arguments of convenience by the fossil-fuel propagandists will be left aside for the remained of my post )These liars just want more fossil fuel power plants built. Which means higher per watt energy prices. And higher per gallon energy prices. (which would dwarf the tiny spec non-solar owners have to pay extra per month, on their electric bill, to make up for the energy company's lost profits)And there are now batteries out on the market (though on back-order for a year - SOLD OUT) which enable solar energy to be saved and used by solar-panel owners during nigh time (or whenever). The introductory price (sure to fall eventually) is actually pretty low.

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Popular Science
July 21, 2015
Installing solar power at home is good for your wallet and the environment, but storing it is no easy feat. Until recently, the process involved connecting a series of finicky, fragile, glorified car batteries. The Powerwall, unveiled by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk earlier this spring, is no DIY project. It’s a simple plug-and-play home lithium-ion battery aimed at changing the way people think about and store energy.

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The Powerwall’s large curvy case is the size of a futuristic boogie board, and it’s meant to be mounted on a wall like art. It draws electricity from the grid when demand and rates are low or sucks it from solar panels atop your roof (panels sold separately). The energy is saved for use during peak power-demand hours, when utilities raise rates, or as backup during a power outage.

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It fits in nicely with another Musk-backed company: SolarCity. But its creators say that Tesla Motors’ prior research into electric cars is what made it possible.

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The Powerwall comes in two models with different storage capacities, prices, and purposes: The 7-kilowatt-hour model costs $3,000 and is designed specifically for daily solar-energy collection and discharging; the 10-kilowatt-hour model costs $3,500 and is meant to store energy for weeks at time as backup. Up to nine Powerwalls of each type can be connected for even greater capacity.

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In America, the number of solar installations is small but growing. And with the price of solar energy systems steadily declining (6 to 8 percent a year since 1998, according to the U.S. Department of Energy), analysts expect solar energy to reach price parity with the larger, fossil-fuel-dominated electrical grid as early as next year. Solar junkies aren’t waiting. Musk recently said the Powerwall was sold out through mid-2016, though customers can still place orders online. Based on potential future savings, it might be well worth the wait.
You Can Finally Afford A Tesla | Popular Science

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The exciting spin-off breakthroughs from the electric car business has enabled revolutions in quick charging batteries, ever increasing energy capacity (it used to take 8 AAA batteries to play a 3 inch Game Gear for 3 hours - 20 years ago!), and cheap cheap cheap technology of all sorts. The car batteries have went down over 70% in price since 2007, and it turns out that household energy is much less intensive than car batteries, so those ever cheaper car batteries were able to be scaled down into a relatively cheap (and frankly vital)solar panel supplement.Now that batteries are proving to be a fairly small priced addition(especially when the price falls, as one would imagine they will) to the panels, why don't we just just call net metering "the right of panel owners to sell electricity at market rates to customers too"?And REALITY CHECK time. In the real non-corrupt world, solar panel's "net metering" reduces prices for everybody. Only when an energy company wants make more profits to finance more power plant projects will the prices rise. The very issue is lost profits for fossil-fuel utilities that popular propaganda passes off as "panel-owners getting subsidized by raising prices for others". Consumers get hit twice by the fossil fuel industry. (1) The fossil fuel extractors want to limit supply as much as possible to jack up prices while encouraging more ways to monopolize the distribution avenues of utilization - forcing their product to be ever increasingly demanded - AND THEN ADDITIONALLY (2) the utilities, which provide the fossil fuel fired-energy, themselves can't stand consumers limiting their (utility company) desired exclusive usefulness and ownership of ALL available distribution rights of energy, so they also make it difficult for consumers to add innovative variances to the (fossil fuel preferred monopolistic) distribution model.Its time we all wake up. First, we can wake up by asking why the fossil fuel propagandists are so fearful of a 1% energy source producing and selling (market rate!) energy anyway?Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

It's not just about finding instances where it's cheaper. It's about showinging that it's scalable. That's what my inquiries into your claims about Maryland meeting all its energy needs with just a few square miles of solar panels have been getting at.To go for a moment back to the example of steam technology, Newcomen's invention was perhaps more efficient (and effective) than alternatives, but its outrageous use of coal made it impracticable as a power source pretty much anywhere other than at a coal mine.Its benefits at the coal mine disappeared once away from the mine. It was limited in where and how it could be used and was thus not scalable.I think there are similar obstacles facing solar. It shows itself to be effective in certain instances, but because of technological limitations - lack of good power storage systems, unreliable sunlight, limited land area, etc. - it isn't scalable to meet the demands energy-hungry advanced societies.

I'm at a loss here.Um, it is, and it gets much cheaper when it is.Texas is 13% of the nations population and has you seen the size of that Austin plant?Read it again Jon.

So we're done talking about Maryland then, eh?

How it takes less than 10 years for a solar panel to pay for itself?How Colombia, Maryland (100,000 people over 32 square miles) gets 100% of it's energy from renewables (including 25% from solar) and has an unemployment rate under 4%? (btw Maryland has about 6 million people in around 10,000 square miles)

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Columbia, Md. Now 100 Percent Renewable with Latest Solar Farm from SunEdison
- SunEdison and BITHENERGY Partner to Build 2 Megawatt Solar Farm for the Community
BELMONT, Calif., Sept. 11, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- SunEdison, Inc. (SUNE), the largest global renewable energy development company, in partnership with BITHENERGY, a leading solar developer, today announced that Columbia, Md. is now offsetting 100 percent of its energy use from renewable sources. Columbia now sources 75 percent of its energy from wind renewable energy credits, and 25 percent from a newly completed two megawatt (MW) DC solar farm in SunEdison and BITHENERGY's Nixon Farm solar project in West Friendship, Md.

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The 2 MW solar farm is expected to generate enough energy to power more than 250 homes and avoid the emission of more than two million pounds of carbon dioxide, equivalent to taking 220 cars off the road.

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Columbia, Md. is home to approximately 100,000 people, and is managed by the non-profit service corporation Columbia Association. The non-profit is purchasing the solar power for the community through a 20 year power purchase agreement with SunEdison. The solar farm is located outside of Columbia, and via virtual net metering credits the community can enjoy the benefits of solar without the need to locate the solar farm on-site.

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"With the completion of the Nixon Farm solar power plant, the people of Columbia now enjoy the environmental and cost benefits of getting 100 percent of their electricity from renewable sources," said Steve Raeder, SunEdison's general manager of Eastern U.S. commercial and industrial solar. "Solar energy is a clean, reliable source of energy that makes great financial sense for communities across the U.S."
Columbia, Md. Now 100 Percent Renewable with Latest Solar Farm from SunEdison

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2015 Columbia, MD Unemployment Rate

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Month/Year Columbia, MD% Maryland% National %
1 / 2015 4.3% 5.9% 5.7%
2 / 2015 4.0% 5.6% 5.5%
3 / 2015 4.0% 5.4% 5.5%
4 / 2015 3.7% 4.9% 5.4%
5 / 2015 4.2% 5.3% 5.5%
6 / 2015 4.5% 5.6% 5.3%
7 / 2015 4.3% 5.4% 5.3%
8 / 2015 4.0% 5.1% 5.1%
9 / 2015 4.0% 5.0% 5.1%
10 / 2015 4.1% 5.2% 5.0%
11 / 2015 3.8% 5.1% 5.0%

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Colombia is about 5 times denser than the rest of Maryland (and a bit to the north of central MD fyi).

The photos are extraordinary (link below). My life feels cramped.Some anecdotes are more powerful than others.

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But Orazkhan, who has spent his life here, fears the winters have grown less harsh in recent years, causing many eagles to migrate elsewhere. "He talks about how the winters used to be much longer; the clouds used to be much darker and more fierce," Mohan says. "The salt lakes that surround him used to stay frozen for many more months than they do nowIt really is quite sobering when you're sitting there in the middle of nowhere, talking to a 94-year-old man who has never heard of the term global warming, and he's talking about something drastic happening there."

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You Have to See These Photos of Mongolian Men Hunting With Eagles

Did you actually read what you quoted?The whole thing is an accounting trick.Do you even know what net metering is?Edited by Jon, : ty po

"The whole thing is an accounting trick"