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Author Topic:   2014 was hotter than 1998. 2015 data in yet?
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(9)
Message 331 of 357 (784021)
05-11-2016 12:13 AM



  
LamarkNewAge
Member (Idle past 737 days)
Posts: 2236
Joined: 12-22-2015


Message 332 of 357 (806784)
04-28-2017 12:42 AM


Wall Street Journal, April 27,2017 (B3): "solar panels... down... 30% in 2016"
quote:
In a last-ditch effort to survive, bankrupt U. S. solar-panel maker Suniva Inc. asked the Trump administration to impose trade tariffs on all foreign-made solar cells.
A lawyer for the company said Suniva filed a petition Wednesday morning with the U. S. International Trade Commission that seeks a four-year tariff of 40 cents a watt on all solar cells made outside the U. S.
Low-cost solar panels, mostly manufactured in Asia, have glutted the global market and pushed down panel prices by roughly 30% in 2016.
....
-Cassandra Sweet
Don't expect much right-wing noise machinery in the vast media world to sound off this developing and developing story. The echo chamber of talk radio stations won't have the journalistic integrity to even fire off an initial mention much less the echoes
Where are the Democrats?
Where is there plan for a mass deployment?
The right wing is openly advocating spending several hundreds of billions of $$$ more on their own favored programs. Here is an amazing example from the same WSJ issue.
quote:
By Martin Feldstein
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin calls the Trump administration''s tax proposal "the largest tax reform in the history of our country." The plan would slash corporate tax rates from 35% to 15% and roll back increases in individual rates that occurred under Presidents Clinton and Obama.
The announcement represents a first step toward a White House budget proposal that combines the president's fiscal plans with reforms to defense spending and domestic policies including ObamaCare. If such a budget is passed, it would stimulate business investment, boost productivity and improve real wages. It would also reverse the decline in military preparedness by raising defense outlays from a projected 2.6% of gross domestic product back to at least 4%.
....
The corporate tax raises revenue equal to about 2% of GDP. Cutting the rate in half will increase the annual deficit by about 1% of GDP, or nearly $200 billion.
This is the Opinion piece by the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan, currently a Harvard professor, and a Wall Street Journal board of contributors.
It seems that the call is for additional spending to the tune of at least 2.6% of our $20 trillion debt economy ( 20 tril is by coincidence the size of the economy too ), or $520 billion a year , among right wing planners.
Democrats make it seem like such a big deal to defend $20 billion a year in spending costs to continue the 30% solar panel tax subsidy. The debate always centers around when it should end and the discussion is pretty much a disagreement over RIGHT NOW or a few more years till we relieve the hard working tax payers of this fiscally expensive expenditure. The Republicans are all too happy to present themselves as defenders of responsibility in budgeting when the Solar Panel subsidy is the subject. The right wing echo chamber always will give a lecture about the terrible expense of the program.
Democrats make no proposals for even a 1% of GDP solar deployment program so corrupt corporate forces enjoy the goalposts being placed so far away from a genuine debate due to no genuine opposition (opposition party for one thing ) to far right wing designs that are ever active at the policy level. No real counter proposals with $200 billion economic growth programs even though solar panels are very timely in more ways than 20.
The fact that solar panels are 30% cheaper than when I started this thread means very little to Washington DC because the American people have no idea what kind of fools represent them. The 2 political parties are enough to make you feel sick. There is $1.82 trillion in mortgage backed securities that Quantitative Easing needs to unload (4.26 trillion bucks total with treasury bonds included) and the results will be higher mortgages for sure. Trump talked down the dollar (saying he wants it weaker and the markets took note ) so God only knows how much higher mortgages interest rates will be thanks to his idiotic admission. How much higher will our debt go with the economic drag from higher mortgage interest rates?
How much higher will our treasury bonds cost us with higher interest rates to pay debt purchasers?
Where are the opposition party Democrats?
Where is their own genuine opposition proposals?
Solar technology ready WHENEVER!

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


Message 333 of 357 (806793)
04-28-2017 3:33 AM


I was in Florida last month. 29C, clear blue skies, air con everywhere, not a solar panel anywhere. Burning fossil fuel to cool has to be the craziest thing.....

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien.
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

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Chiroptera
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 334 of 357 (806794)
04-28-2017 6:55 AM


Maybe when the US economy tanks for good, American workers will be able to get jobs in the sweat shops the Chinese will build here to make solar panels.

I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it. -- Paul Krugman

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jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 335 of 357 (806795)
04-28-2017 7:33 AM
Reply to: Message 333 by Tangle
04-28-2017 3:33 AM


29c? Yup, normal winter weather. It has been over 100F (38C) here three day this week and calling for temps over 105F (40C) today and tomorrow. Fortunately both here and in Florida we can also choose from several clean energy suppliers so even if you don't see solar panels on the roof the site might be using them.
We had four days over 100F in March this year and one in February.
Just more evidence the folk here in the Valley are sinners and being punished by God (and once again his punishment fails in the face of A/C. It's them damn iron wheel chariots all over again. Poor God can't catch a break.).

My Sister's Website: Rose Hill Studios My Website: My Website

This message is a reply to:
 Message 333 by Tangle, posted 04-28-2017 3:33 AM Tangle has not replied

  
LamarkNewAge
Member (Idle past 737 days)
Posts: 2236
Joined: 12-22-2015


Message 336 of 357 (806884)
04-28-2017 8:16 PM
Reply to: Message 334 by Chiroptera
04-28-2017 6:55 AM


Solar Panel jobs, Chinese competition, and "sweat shops"
I started this thread On January 2, 2016.
From January 1 2016 to January 1 2017, a $20,000 solar panel array fell from $20,000 to $14,000 installed (?).
American installation jobs have the best chance ever to boom.
Frankly, the dynamic budget scoring would bring perhaps 25% of a $200 billion yearly spending program back to federal coffers.
A federal program that gave the nation free solar panels could further cover costs by requesting a small monthly fee (based on splitting the monthly energy bill savings the homeowner benefits from ) for, say, the first 10 years. That could ensure that the $200 billion yearly spending program gets perhaps another 50% back.
The macroeconomic benefits are very good for Americans in so many other ways.
The sweatshop arguments against free trade have fallen prey to the overwhelming evidence. The income of China was about $7,500 in 2014 while the world's was around $11,500. China is growing fast enough (over $700 billion a year ) that there will be parity by 2020 (both around $12,500 per person in U. S. Dollars).
Italy, for example, will be around $35,000 and we will be, absent a collapse, $66,000)
The trend isn't sweatshops.
Not here or in China. The Chinese are aging and elderly care demands will reduce unemployment down to like 0% in a decade in China.

This message is a reply to:
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LamarkNewAge
Member (Idle past 737 days)
Posts: 2236
Joined: 12-22-2015


Message 337 of 357 (807922)
05-06-2017 11:17 PM


Tesla has an electric car for half the $70,000 price of the Model S (cited earlier )
The Model 3 is a $35,000 electric car and that is what the company hopes will finally bring in enough consumer cash to enable profits for the first time ever.
From Reuters
quote:
Tesla is banking on the mass-market Model 3, which could finally allow the company to stem its free-wheeling cash burn and turn a profit
This is an electric car that only costs a little more than $10,000 above the average combustion engine car, and around $15,000 more than a comparable gas guzzler of the same class.
Not bad for a car that is priced to make some big profits (if the company was already established enough and had higher market shares among consumers, then the higher sales volume could enable the price to be perhaps a few thousand dollars lower ).
Electric powered cars (unlike bigger automobiles ) are far more effective than gas guzzlers in energy efficiency and save around $2000 a year in energy costs.
They have great potential for reducing demand for fossil fuels, which could lock in $50 a barrel oil, and the permanent lower gallon gas prices would be a major economic growth driver. The lower per gallon price at the tank would make a significant gas tax increase justifiable (assuming the Democrats care enough to understand the concept of reduced demand lowering prices and then make a sincere effort to educate the public ), which could fund infrastructure projects that benefit the country enormously (and are desperately needed for all sorts of reasons ).
We can hope that the battery technology gets cheaper still so that the electric cars don't cost so much more to start with. Americans don't want to wait for over a half of a decade to save enough on fuel that the initial higher car price evens out ( with savings ultimately taking slightly longer ).
But the car batteries Tesla helped to establish as (almost or already? ) affordable already have been proven to be a major blessing to us all due to the (much cheaper ) PowerWall home battery that was a spinoff product made possible by the major price drops in car battery technology.
Tesla has jumped into the solar panel business as well and perhaps a way can be found to get home construction companies to build panels into new homes during construction ( with PowerWalls ) which would save a ton on installation costs.
The more panels sold and installed, the cheaper the technology gets. That seems to be the rule.
The prices for solar plants are competitive with fossil fuel plants already (though they can't fully replace them all until solar energy can be stored for use when the sun isn't shining ), so the fundamental march forward is progressing ever onward.
Meanwhile
There was a major poll that actually saw most Americans tell the pollsters that they could tolerate 1% higher energy prices to help move newer technology forward. The same Americans opposed higher price increases by a wide margin, but the fact that any price increases were supported by the majority of the American people was groundbreaking.
The poll came out around spring or summer (possibly fall? ) of 2016.
It still isn't compatible with the environmentalists push for ever higher fossil fuel prices (a grand strategy that has been a predictable political failure ) but it is compatible with Net Metering solar panel policies.
The problem is that pro solar politicians have been doing not so good at the ballot boxes ( due to being tied up and embedded with an increasingly out of touch Democratic party ) , so wise, pragmatic, progressive policy is essentially in the Republican's hand.
In other words, hope that the raw market forces, bringing ever lower prices (and much lower eventually ), bring mass deployment of solar energy SOONER rather than later.
The much lower bottom line prices could have happened much sooner with wise government intervention, but that would mean that the Democratic party would have had a makeover, which has yet to even begin to happen, already under way years ago.
(the big Democratic makeover seems to be not only based on going bat shit anti gun crazy, but further isolating itself , when its new party chair, Tom Perez, said that Pro Life Democrats need to leave the party. I think we are all as stunned as Bernie Sanders, considering that all 3 highly vulnerable Pro Life Democratic senators are up for re-election in 2018, when he objects to the intolerant declaration from on high, on the grounds that Democratic success depends on being a 50 state party, as opposed to a party that limits itself to a 24 to 30 state battlefield )
Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

  
LamarkNewAge
Member (Idle past 737 days)
Posts: 2236
Joined: 12-22-2015


Message 338 of 357 (808186)
05-09-2017 12:26 AM


Obama fuel efficiency standards holding up after Trump's executive orders?
I expressed concern about a new administration coming in and changing ( eliminating was my actual concern from one of my earliest posts from back in January 2016) the efficiency standards that have worked economic and environmental miracles .
Here is a glimmer of hope from the New York Times editorial.
Monday,, May 8, 2017
quote:
As David Roberts of Vox has pointed out, that agenda is both plutocratic and lazy. It seeks to confer new benefits on oil and gas interests that are already richly favored. Yet it requires nothing of Mr. Trump himself. All he has done is issue executive orders that tell someone else to do the work. He cannot scrap the clean power rule or President Barack Obama''s aggressive fuel efficiency standards : the relevant federal agencies will have to face the laborious and uncertain process of writing new rules and whatever court challenges those rules bring.
I'm not a big fan of the political judgment of the NYT , as they seem to have bad political judgment, and I wonder if the fuel efficiency standards are truly safe or just temporarily safe. The bottom line is that the Times might simply not care enough about this vitally important issue enough (compared to the editorial pages' chronic gun obsession ) to be truly sensitive to its ultimate four year survival chances.
Four years are the important benchmark because that means that a future election can decide the issue before damage is done.
And what damage an ending of the efficiency standards would be!
We have essentially gotten past the most painful period in the incandescent to LED lightbulb transition, with upfront costs for LEDs falling dramatically in the last 5 years. The problem is that bringing back unregulated market rules would result in consumers choosing to save a tiny bit upfront only to suffer from higher energy bills in a month.
Gone will be the $100 billion a year savings in lower energy bills Americans will enjoy by around 2020 (already almost there)
And 2% higher energy consumption will require lots of new power plants added to the grid and macroeconomic analysis will suggest higher per watt rates in addition to the $100 billion per year from static microeconomic analysis of higher watt usage (not taking into account the higher per watt rates but assuming the price per watt stays the same ).
Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

Replies to this message:
 Message 339 by NoNukes, posted 05-10-2017 3:13 AM LamarkNewAge has replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 339 of 357 (808312)
05-10-2017 3:13 AM
Reply to: Message 338 by LamarkNewAge
05-09-2017 12:26 AM


Re: Obama fuel efficiency standards holding up after Trump's executive orders?
I'm not a big fan of the political judgment of the NYT , as they seem to have bad political judgment, and I wonder if the fuel efficiency standards are truly safe or just temporarily safe.
Failing to keep up with the rest of the world in increasing gas mileage is something that US automakers do at the risk of losing chunks of the market. Making cars more fuel efficient is such a common sense, consumer driven thing to do, that surely at least some foreign manufacturers will do so.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. Thomas Jefferson
Seems to me if its clear that certain things that require ancient dates couldn't possibly be true, we are on our way to throwing out all those ancient dates on the basis of the actual evidence. -- Faith
Some of us are worried about just how much damage he will do in his last couple of weeks as president, to make it easier for the NY Times and Washington post to try to destroy Trump's presidency. -- marc9000

This message is a reply to:
 Message 338 by LamarkNewAge, posted 05-09-2017 12:26 AM LamarkNewAge has replied

Replies to this message:
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LamarkNewAge
Member (Idle past 737 days)
Posts: 2236
Joined: 12-22-2015


Message 340 of 357 (808451)
05-10-2017 9:55 PM
Reply to: Message 339 by NoNukes
05-10-2017 3:13 AM


Re: Obama fuel efficiency standards holding up after Trump's executive orders?
Though you will rarely find me saying something good about this race-to-the-bottom 50 state nightmare ( which education funding is the most obvious among the endless economically ruining casualties ), it seems that this 50 states of differing standards might save us here.
California and New York are 2 states that alone have over 18% of the population and they have said that any cars sold in our states must meet the (obsolete? ) Obama era efficiency standards.
They will be joined by many more states.
It will force the technology to be developed on schedule.
Even if the sales of efficient vehicles go down nationwide, nevertheless the technology will advance onward toward the future and on the 2025 time benchmark.
2025 will be after 2 more Presidential elections too, so we have to make it clear that there will be a fundamental reality that the various industries must take into account - efficiency standards that won't be blown off by a 46.1% minority vote President.
The fart in the tub we call President Donald J Trump is a temporary bad weather phenomenon NOT a changer of the fundamental climate among the thoughtful and technocratic policymakers who know that the efficiency standards are a must if we want an economically prosperous future .

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(1)
Message 341 of 357 (809852)
05-21-2017 7:30 PM


2016 Hottest on Record
My brother Xongsmith proposed a new topic on this, so I thought I would add it in here
quote:
Empirical / Tests Myths
The key test of a hypothesis is whether it can stand up to real world observations. Real observations reveal that the "CO2 is a major cause of global climate change" hypothesis is FALSE!
... with charts from 1990 and 1999 ...
Meanwhile the real scientists move forward with the latest data:
quote:
2016 Was the Hottest Year on Record, and Humans Are to Blame
Damian Carrington Science Date of Publication: 01.18.17. 2:15 pm
2016 was the hottest year on record, setting a new high for the third year in a row, with scientists firmly putting the blame on human activities that drive climate change.
The final data for 2016 was released on Wednesday by the three key agenciesthe UK Met Office and NASA and NOAA in the USand showed 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have been this century.
The new data shows the Earth has now risen about 1.1C above the levels seen before the industrial revolution, when large-scale fossil fuel burning began. This brings it perilously close to the 1.5C target included as an aim of the global climate agreement signed in Paris in December 2015.
The three temperature records are independent but reached very similar conclusions. The datasets are all singing the same song, said Arndt. The data from NOAA showed a run of 16 successive months from May 2015 to August 2016 when the global average temperature broke or equalled previous records, while no land area experienced an annual average temperature in 2016 that was cooler than 20th-century average.
NOAA also found Arctic sea ice fell to its lowest annual average extent on record and Antarctic sea ice to the second smallest extent on record. The warming in the Arctic in 2016 was astounding, Schmidt said.
Prof Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, said: The spate of record-warm years that we have seen in the 21st century can only be explained by human-caused climate change. The effect of human activity on our climate is no longer subtle. It’s plain as day, as are the impactsin the form of record floods, droughts, superstorms and wildfiresthat it is having on us and our planet.
Past time to do something.
Enjoy

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Replies to this message:
 Message 342 by ICANT, posted 05-21-2017 10:17 PM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

  
ICANT
Member
Posts: 6769
From: SSC
Joined: 03-12-2007
Member Rating: 1.5


Message 342 of 357 (809867)
05-21-2017 10:17 PM
Reply to: Message 341 by RAZD
05-21-2017 7:30 PM


Re: 2016 Hottest on Record
Hi RAZD,
RAZD writes:
Past time to do something.
Isn't the earth supposed to get so hot in the future that man can not survive on it?
It does not make any difference whether we contribute global warming or not.
The Sun is going to get so big it will swallow the earth about 4 billion years from now. Which means that it will cease to have water a long time before then.
That means that the Sun is increasing in size every day which is making the earth warmer.
So which is it that is doing the damage, man or the Sun?
God Bless,

"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 341 by RAZD, posted 05-21-2017 7:30 PM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 343 by Taq, posted 05-22-2017 11:40 AM ICANT has replied
 Message 346 by NoNukes, posted 05-23-2017 11:06 AM ICANT has replied
 Message 347 by ringo, posted 05-23-2017 12:02 PM ICANT has replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9970
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


(2)
Message 343 of 357 (809954)
05-22-2017 11:40 AM
Reply to: Message 342 by ICANT
05-21-2017 10:17 PM


Re: 2016 Hottest on Record
ICANT writes:
Isn't the earth supposed to get so hot in the future that man can not survive on it?
Where did you hear that from?
It does not make any difference whether we contribute global warming or not.
The Sun is going to get so big it will swallow the earth about 4 billion years from now. Which means that it will cease to have water a long time before then.
What is wrong with wanting a nice planet to live on in the intervening 4 billion years?
So which is it that is doing the damage, man or the Sun?
Right now, it is man.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 342 by ICANT, posted 05-21-2017 10:17 PM ICANT has replied

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LamarkNewAge
Member (Idle past 737 days)
Posts: 2236
Joined: 12-22-2015


(1)
Message 344 of 357 (810036)
05-23-2017 12:47 AM


Here is an example of why the Democrats are loosing followers. Navajo situation .
See May 7,2017 New York Post article Losing Power by Salena Zito.
quote:
The Navajo Indian Tribe is the largest reservation in the country , with almost 200,000 people living in an area spread across the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah
Navajo leader Russell Begaye is fighting hard to save the Navajo Generating Station coal plant in Arizona, which is about to be shut down.
The Democrats in Washington DC imposed regulations that mean it won't be able to deliver power at an affordable price.
Totally absent any associated funding for wind and solar projects.
Out with 3200 direct and indirect jobs on a reservation with a 47% unemployment rate.
The Navajo leader, on behalf of his people, said :
quote:
"President Trump said he was behind the coal people. I believe he will stand with us. "
Man o boy, this is sad.
We have a trillion dollars to spend on the military each and every year, but can't find the money for solar power plants in sunny Arizona?
No wonder the coal issue helped Trump cross the finish line on election day.
The Democrats lost because they deserved to loose. This Russian conspiracy crap is further evidence as if we don't have enough evidence that the Democratic party isn't a true opposition party already. More pro military spending propaganda at a time when already hurting American communities are falling apart .
There are a million reasons why Trump won and the 200,000 members of the Navajo reservation are that many reasons right there.

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 345 of 357 (810079)
05-23-2017 11:02 AM
Reply to: Message 343 by Taq
05-22-2017 11:40 AM


Re: 2016 Hottest on Record
ICANT writes:
Isn't the earth supposed to get so hot in the future that man can not survive on it?
Taq writes:
Where did you hear that from?
That is indeed what we expect to happen. In about 4.5 billion years when the sun leaves the main sequence and becomes a red giant.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. Thomas Jefferson
Seems to me if its clear that certain things that require ancient dates couldn't possibly be true, we are on our way to throwing out all those ancient dates on the basis of the actual evidence. -- Faith
Some of us are worried about just how much damage he will do in his last couple of weeks as president, to make it easier for the NY Times and Washington post to try to destroy Trump's presidency. -- marc9000

This message is a reply to:
 Message 343 by Taq, posted 05-22-2017 11:40 AM Taq has not replied

  
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