ZNAK SAGITE — više od fantastike — edicija, časopis, knjižara...

Eto, Meho, Mića je glavni za vodu i misli da je bezbedan. Međutim, izgleda da će pre nego što poraste nivo mora da se sva voda natoči preko Srbije. Ko je rekao da Srbija nije monsunska zemlja?


Ili, kupite kristal sa kiseonikom, trebaće vam dok ronite u potrazi za nekom retkom knjigom koju čuvate u podrumu.


http://www.gizmag.com/crystalline-material-absorb-oxygen-denmark/34064/

Ne... neee..
Knjige se čuvaju na tavanu (dobro izolovanom...)

Pa nije samo do kuće problem. Problem je u gubitku obradivog zemljišta, migracijama stanovništva, daljoj promeni klime zbog povećanja vodene a smanjenja kopnene mase itd. 

No, to na stranu, ovo što Mića pita dole u postu, pa to je praktično zaplet Benfordovog Timescapea (s ti što se tamo pokušavaju doseći šezdesete godine) i, naravno, i ja sam se slično pitao. Danas bismo živeli u mnogo drugačijem svetu, to je sigurno, ne samo u klimatskom smislu nego i u geopolitičkom....

Meho, valjda vidiš da se šalim... Ali nemoj jednostrano da gledaš posledice globalnog otopljavanja. Doći će do ubrzavanja hidrološkog ciklusa, vode će biti više. Čovek je danas okrenut zemlji. Zašto se ne okrenemo moru kao izvoru hrane? Svet će izgledati drugačije nego danas, to je sigurno, ali ja nisam sasvim siguran da li će promene dovesti do boljitka ili nazatka. Mi smo ti koji se bavimo SF-om. Mi smo ti koji bi trebalo da imamo slobodnije vidike. Mislim da je tačka kada se moglo razmišljati o adaptaciji davno prošla. Ostaje nam pametno prilagođavanje. Bar ja tako mislim.

Delimično si u pravu, ali posledice dvadesetih bi bile mnogo drugačije... Velika depresija da li bi se dogodila? Da li bi bilo II svetskog rata?

Naravno da vidim da se šališ a i ja sam stavio smalija na kraj prvog reda da bude jasno da je sve u žovijalnom tonu.

Ali svakako, posledice će biti velike mada postepene. Eksploatacija postojećeg rudnog bogatstva će svakako biti pogođena s obzirom na podizanje nivoa vode; kako već rekoh, biće migracija, videćemo kako će izgledati situacija sa pijaćom vodom itd. Zgodna stvar u sveu je svakako što pričamo o procesu koji će trajati decenijama pa na kraju to možda bude toliko puzajuća katastrofa da i ne bude percipirano kao mnogo strašna katastrofa. Ali, kad već pominjemo SF, meni je uvek u glavi Ballardov Potopljeni svet kao divna meditacija o tome kako se promena klime i njoj srodna promena odnosa vode i kopna na zemlji odražava ne samo na društvenu sferu nego i na biologiju/ psihologiju...

D plot tiknz:


Wind power is cheapest energy, EU analysis finds

Quote
Onshore wind is cheaper than coal, gas or nuclear energy when the costs of 'external' factors like air quality, human toxicity and climate change are taken into account, according to an EU analysis.
The report says that for every megawatt hour (MW/h) of electricity generated, onshore wind costs roughly €105 (£83) per MW/h, compared to gas and coal which can cost up to around €164 and €233 per MW/h, respectively.
Nuclear power, offshore wind and solar energy are all comparably inexpensive generators, at roughly €125 per MW/h.
"This report highlights the true cost of Europe's dependence on fossil fuels," said Justin Wilkes, the deputy CEO of the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA). "Renewables are regularly denigrated for being too expensive and a drain on the taxpayer. Not only does the commission's report show the alarming cost of coal but it also presents onshore wind as both cheaper and more environmentally-friendly."
The paper, which was written for the European commission by the Ecofys consultancy, suggests that the Conservative party plan of restricting new onshore windfarms will mean blocking out the cheapest source of energy when environmental and health facts are taken into consideration. It has been suggested the Tory plan could be done through a cap on onshore wind turbines' output, lower subsidies or tighter planning restrictions.
"Any plans to change policy for onshore wind must be looked at in the context of this report," said Oliver Joy a spokesman for EWEA. "Investors need long-term visibility. 'Stop-start' policies as well as harsh retroactive changes can blindside investors, driving up the risk premium and cost of capital."
The documents' contents may also be unwelcome in some quarters of the commission, which early today published selective results from it that did not include external health and pollution costs.
These showed that renewable energy took €38.3bn of public subsidies in 2012, compared to €22.3bn for gas, coal and nuclear. The EU did however note that if free carbon allowances to polluters were included in the data, it "would reduce the gap between support for renewables and other power generation technologies."
The Ecofys paper's nuanced evaluation of historical subsidies for coal and nuclear was also not mentioned in the EU press release, which renewable energy associations linked to a fossil fuel lobbying effort ahead of the report's publication.
"Despite decades of heavy subsidies, mature coal and nuclear energy technologies are still dependent on similar levels of public support as innovative solar energy is receiving today," Frauke Thies, the policy director for the European Photovoltaic Industry Association told the Guardian.
"The difference is that costs of solar continue to decrease rapidly. If the unaccounted external costs to society are included, the report demonstrates that support to fossil fuels and nuclear even by far exceeds that to solar."
The EU's energy commissioner, Gunther Oettinger, said that the report was only "a first step" to filling gaps in knowledge about the nature of energy subsidies and more reports are likely in the months ahead.

The figures for the energy sources in the report are all approximate, as the bar chart listing them is counted in units of €25 MW/h.
Last year, a row broke out in Brussels after the German newspaper Suddeutche Zeitung reported that Oettinger had tried to delete figures cited in a commission report showing that in 2011, fossil fuels took €26bn in public subsidies, compared to €35bn for nuclear power and €30bn for renewables.

Treba da proizvodimo vetrenjače ili kako se to već zove na srpskom. A košava nam je najbolji resurs.

Da li među vama ima ikoga ko bi poverovao u to?

Ma, dobro, ovde se u prvoj rečenici kaže da se uračunavaju troškovi poput klimackih promena, kvaliteta vazduha itd. Svakako je ovo pomalo ideološki.

Bilo bi zgodno kad bismo napravili džinovske lebdeće panele koji bi lebdeli iznad oblaka i istovremeno skupljali energiju i smanjili energiju koju primamo od Sunca. To će biti aktuelno tek onda kad se svet dobro poveže brzim prugama koje će omogućiti avionske brzine za autobusku cenu. Tada ti lebdeći paneli neće smetati civilnom avio sobraćaju (koga više biti neće).

Ja mislim da na prethodnim stranama baš ovog topika imaš malu računicu kako bi vetrenjače podignute na visinu od samo dvesta metara mogle da proizvode dovoljno energije da se podmire sve trenutne svetske potrebe. Zaista moramo da se oslobodimo tih prokletih aviona. 

Naravno. Računica je laka. Pošto će se zbog fosilnog goriva povećati nivo mora, troškovi za adaptaciju na te promene biće enormni, pa stoga je mnogo jeftinije koristiti vetrenjači koje su samo tri ili četiri puta skuplje od fosilnog goriva...
Ne zajebavajte me...

Ali ostavljanje planete u upotrebljivom stanju našoj deci - neprocenjivo!!!!!!!!

Mac, ima i previše pustinja na svetu da bi se pravili tvoji paneli, ali ima premalo rešenja za konzerviranje energije i transport. Ispada da je Tesla prerano ostavio svet bez svojih ideja. Takođe, sva ostala rešenja trpe iste probleme, pa drva i ugalj u podrumu ili na stovarištu i dalje imaju prednost.

Meho, ne znam kako da ti kažem, ali većina ljudi sa kojima sam pričao tvrdi da je stvar otišla tako daleko da je mitigacija prošlost.
Drugim rečima, kupi šlauf...

Ne znam dal' ćemo mi ovo doživeti, al Dancima valja skinuti kapu za ambiciju:

Denmark Plans to Be Coal-Free in 10 Years, Totally Clean-Powered in 35

Quote

Denmark is a small, rich, very industrialized nation—it's home to corporate behemoths like Maersk and Lego—that also happens to an unparalleled pioneer in clean energy.
Earlier this year, the nation's leadership announced that it planned to run its economy entirely on renewable power by 2050, and would phase out coal by 2030. Months later, the Danish government reported that wind was about to become far cheaper than fossil fuels. This week, it said it'd like to try to do even better, and kill coal in ten years, not fifteen.
"I have asked my office to investigate what could be done to stop burning coal in just ten years," Rasmus Petersen, Denmark's climate and energy minister, told a local newspaper. Denmark has been a leader in wind power for decades, after investing in the the technology in the wake of the 1976 global oil crisis.
If you live in the US, or places like Canada or Australia, this sort of progressive energy policy probably strikes you as mind-bogglingly audacious. Many leaders in those countries are still clinging to coal and touting the benefits of 'bridge' fossil fuels like natural gas. Only a handful of European nations—Germany, Norway, Spain, Italy—and many more developing countries are comparably bullish on clean power.
To highlight this disparity, and to remind the world that an aggressive embrace of renewable energy is not only possible but plausible, Greenpeace released a media briefing and staged a demonstration in Copenhagen, where the world's leading climate scientists are gathered to finalize the latest IPCC report, which is basically the climate change bible for international policy makers.
It was, as far as Greenpeace actions go, pleasant and participatory—activists teamed with the owners of wind power cooperatives to project striking designs onto the iconic structures.

"The turbines looked fantastic and went on the evening news here," Kat Skeie, Greenpeace Nordic's communications officer, told me in an email.
The media briefing, meanwhile, highlighted the impressive clean energy goals that Denmark has already made legally binding domestically:

   
• 100 percent renewable energy by 2050
• 100 percent renewable energy in electricity and heating by 2035
• A complete phase-out of coal by 2030
• 40 percent reduction of domestic greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 by 2020
• 50 percent of electricity demands met by wind by 2020

"Yes, Denmark is officially on track to 100 percent renewable energy in 2050," Skeie told me. "And we are ahead on several sub-targets." Coal is being replaced by a combination of wind, solar, and biomass, along with a smart grid that better accommodate more intermittent generation.
The latest IPCC synthesis is likely to contain prognostications that suggest economies reduce their fossil fuel use nearly to zero if we hope to avoid more than 2˚C of warming, a level of heating which would prove an existential threat to modern civilization.
Denmark's clean energy roadmap is a useful reminder that it can be done—but it's not the only such blueprint out there. In the past Stanford professor Mark Z. Jacobson has told me that massive economies like California can and will run entirely on clean energy—and his own peer-reviewed roadmaps demonstrate how.
"There's about a 95 percent chance that [California] will be powered by 100 percent clean energy," he said. Jacobson, who also touts a global roadmap to clean energy dominion, is considered extremely bullish. But nationwide commitments like Denmark's remind us that it is entirely plausible to believe we can indeed decouple our economies from fossil fuels and still thrive.

Ujedinjene Nacije: klimatske promene se definitivno dešavaju i rezultat su skoro potpuno ljudskih akcija.

UN climate report offers stark warnings, hope

Quote

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Climate change is happening, it's almost entirely man's fault and limiting its impacts may require reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero this century, the U.N.'s panel on climate science said Sunday.
The fourth and final volume of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's giant climate assessment offered no surprises, nor was it expected to since it combined the findings of three reports released in the past 13 months.
But it underlined the scope of the climate challenge in stark terms. Emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, may need to drop to zero by the end of this century for the world to have a decent chance of keeping the temperature rise below a level that many consider dangerous.
The IPCC did not say exactly what such a world would look like but it would likely require a massive shift to renewable sources to power homes, cars and industries combined with new technologies to suck greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
The report warned that failure to reduce emissions could lock the world on a trajectory with "irreversible" impacts on people and the environment. Some impacts already being observed included rising sea levels, a warmer and more acidic ocean, melting glaciers and Arctic sea ice and more frequent and intense heat waves.
"Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message. Leaders must act. Time is not on our side," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the report's launch in Copenhagen.
Amid its grim projections, the report said the tools are there to set the world on a low-emissions path and break the addiction to burning oil, coal and gas which pollute the atmosphere with heat-trapping CO2, the chief greenhouse gas.
"All we need is the will to change, which we trust will be motivated by knowledge and an understanding of the science of climate change," IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said.
The IPCC was set up in 1988 to assess global warming and its impacts. The report released Sunday caps its latest assessment, a mega-review of 30,000 climate change studies that establishes with 95-percent certainty that most of the warming seen since the 1950s is man-made. The IPCC's best estimate is that just about all of it is man-made, but it can't say that with the same degree of certainty.
Today only a small minority of scientists challenge the mainstream conclusion that climate change is linked to human activity.
Global Climate Change, a NASA website, says 97 percent of climate scientists agree that warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities.
The American public isn't as convinced. A year-old survey by Pew Research showed 67 percent of Americans believed global warming is occurring and 44 percent said the earth is warming mostly because of human activity. More recently, a New York Times poll said 42 percent of Republicans say global warming won't have a serious impact, a view held by 12 percent of Democrats and 22 percent of independents.
Sleep-deprived delegates approved the final documents Saturday after a weeklong line-by-line review that underscored that the IPCC process is not just about science. The reports must be approved both by scientists and governments, which means political issues from U.N. climate negotiations, which are nearing a 2015 deadline for a global agreement, inevitably affect the outcome.
The rift between developed and developing countries in the U.N. talks opened up in Copenhagen over a passage on what levels of warming could be considered dangerous. After a protracted battle, the text was dropped from a key summary for policy-makers — to the disappointment of some scientists.
"If the governments are going to expect the IPCC to do their job," said Princeton professor Michael Oppenheimer, a lead author of the IPCC's second report, they shouldn't "get caught up in fights that have nothing to do with the IPCC."
The omission meant the word "dangerous" disappeared from the summary altogether. It appeared only twice in a longer underlying report compared to seven times in a draft produced before the Copenhagen session. The less loaded word "risk" was mentioned 65 times in the final 40-page summary.
"Rising rates and magnitudes of warming and other changes in the climate system, accompanied by ocean acidification, increase the risk of severe, pervasive, and in some cases irreversible detrimental impacts," the report said.
World governments in 2009 set a goal of keeping the temperature rise below 2 degrees C (3.6 F) compared to before the industrial revolution. Temperatures have gone up about 0.8 C (1.4 F) since the 19th century.
Emissions have risen so fast in recent years that the world has used up two-thirds of its carbon budget, the maximum amount of CO2 that can be emitted to have a likely chance of avoiding 2 degrees of warming, the IPCC report said.
"This report makes it clear that if you are serious about the 2-degree goal ... there is nowhere to hide," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. "You can't wait several decades to address this issue."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the report demands "ambitious, decisive and immediate action."
"Those who choose to ignore or dispute the science so clearly laid out in this report do so at great risk for all of us and for our kids and grandkids," Kerry said in a statement.
The IPCC said the cost of actions such as shifting to solar and wind power and other renewable sources and improving energy efficiency would reduce economic growth only by 0.06 percent annually.
Pachauri said that should be measured against the implications of doing nothing, putting "all species that live on this planet" at peril.
The report is meant as a scientific roadmap for the U.N. climate negotiations, which continue next month in Lima, Peru. That's the last major conference before a summit in Paris next year, where a global agreement on climate action is supposed to be adopted.
The biggest hurdle is deciding who should do what. Rich countries are calling on China and other major developing countries to set ambitious targets; developing countries saying the rich have a historical responsibility to lead the fight against warming and to help poorer nations cope with its impacts. The IPCC avoided taking sides, saying the risks of climate change "are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development."

Stara priča. Zelenaši bi da njihov svet živi od zelenašenja, a da teret čišćenja nastalih sranja nabaci onima koji proizvode za njih.

A Tricky Transition From Fossil Fuel: Denmark Aims for 100 Percent Renewable Energy

QuoteCOPENHAGEN —  Denmark, a tiny country on the northern fringe of Europe, is pursuing the world's most ambitious policy against climate change. It aims to end the burning of fossil fuels in any form by 2050 — not just in electricity production, as some other countries hope to do, but in transportation as well.
Now a question is coming into focus: Can Denmark keep the lights on as it chases that lofty goal?
Lest anyone consider such a sweeping transition to be impossible in principle, the Danes beg to differ. They essentially invented the modern wind-power industry, and have pursued it more avidly than any country. They are above 40 percent renewable power on their electric grid, aiming toward 50 percent by 2020. The political consensus here to keep pushing is all but unanimous.
Their policy is similar to that of neighboring Germany, which has spent tens of billions pursuing wind and solar power, and is likely to hit 30 percent renewable power on the electric grid this year. But Denmark, at the bleeding edge of global climate policy, is in certain ways the more interesting case. The 5.6 million Danes have pushed harder than the Germans, they have gotten further — and they are reaching the point where the problems with the energy transition can no longer be papered over.


The trouble, if it can be called that, is that renewable power sources like wind and solar cost nothing to run, once installed. That is potentially a huge benefit in the long run.
But as more of these types of power sources push their way onto the electric grid, they cause power prices to crash at what used to be the most profitable times of day.
That can render conventional power plants, operating on gas or coal or uranium, uneconomical to run. Yet those plants are needed to supply backup power for times when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining.
With their prime assets throwing off less cash, electricity suppliers in Germany and Denmark are on edge. They have applied to shut down a slew of newly unprofitable power plants, but nervous governments are resisting, afraid of being caught short on some cold winter's night with little wind.
The governments have offered short-term subsidies, knowing that if they force companies to operate these plants at a loss, it will be a matter of time before the companies start going bankrupt.
Throughout Europe, governments have come to the realization that electricity markets are going to have to be redesigned for the new age, but they are not pursuing this task with urgency. A bad redesign could itself throw customers into the dark, after all, as happened in California a decade ago.
Denmark is geographically lucky. It has strong electrical linkages to neighboring Sweden, with plentiful nuclear power capacity, and Norway, with power available on demand from dams. But Swedish politicians have vowed to shut down the country's nuclear plants and go renewable, and Norway's cheap hydroelectric power is in rising demand, with a supply line under consideration to energy-hungry Britain. So the Danish electricity industry sees trouble coming.Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story "We are really worried about this situation," Anders Stouge, the deputy director general of the Danish Energy Association, said in an interview. "If we don't do something, we will in the future face higher and higher risks of blackouts."
The government is somewhat dismissive of that notion but well aware that it needs to find a way out of this box. Environmental groups, for their part, have tended to sneer at the problems the utilities are having, contending that it is their own fault for not getting on the renewables bandwagon years ago.
But the political risks of the situation also ought to be obvious to the greens. The minute any European country — or an ambitious American state, like California — has a blackout attributable to the push for renewables, public support for the transition could weaken drastically.
So the trick now is to get the market redesign right. A modest version of reform would essentially attach a market value, and thus a price, to standby capacity. But Rasmus Helveg Petersen, the Danish climate minister, told me he was tempted by a more ambitious approach. That would involve real-time pricing of electricity for anyone using it — if the wind is blowing vigorously or the sun is shining brightly, prices would fall off a cliff, but in times of shortage they would rise just as sharply.
As Denmark, like other countries, installs more smart meters and smart appliances able to track those prices with no human intervention, one can imagine a system in which demand would adjust smoothly to the available supply. Most people would not care if their water heater were conspiring with other water heaters to decide when to switch on and off, as long as hot water reliably came out of the tap.
Yet, even if Denmark can figure out a proper design for the electric market, it has another big task to meet its 2050 goal: squeezing the fossil fuels out of transportation. Prematurely, perhaps, the country embraced a proposed system of electric cars in which depleted batteries would be switched for fresh ones in minutes, but only a few hundred cars were sold before that overly ambitious plan flopped.
Mr. Petersen told me he still felt electrification of cars was the way to go, but the cars themselves were not really ready.
"We need longer range and lower prices before this becomes a good option," he said. "Technology needs to save us here."

Evo vam predavanja na koje sam vas zvao u septembru...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b7ZUxZ8twU

Zahvaljujemo! 

Harvardski naučnici kažu da bi globalna klima trebalo da se dotera ručno:
Adjusting Earth's thermostat, with caution

Quote
     Cambridge, Mass. – November 17, 2014 – A vast majority of scientists believe that the Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate and that human activity is almost certainly the dominant cause. But on the topics of response and mitigation, there is far less consensus.
One of the most controversial propositions for slowing the increase in temperatures here on Earth is to manipulate the atmosphere above. Specifically, some scientists believe it should be possible to offset the warming effect of greenhouses gases by reflecting more of the sun's energy back into space.
The potential risks—and benefits—of solar radiation management (SRM) are substantial. So far, however, all of the serious testing has been confined to laboratory chambers and theoretical models. While those approaches are valuable, they do not capture the full range of interactions among chemicals, the impact of sunlight on these reactions, or multiscale variations in the atmosphere.
Now, a team of researchers from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has outlined how a small-scale "stratospheric perturbation experiment" could work. By proposing, in detail, a way to take the science of geoengineering to the skies, they hope to stimulate serious discussion of the practice by policymakers and scientists.
Ultimately, they say, informed decisions on climate policy will need to rely on the best information available from controlled and cautious field experiments.
The paper is among several published today in a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A that examine the nuances, the possible consequences, and the current state of scientific understanding of climate engineering. David Keith, whose work features prominently in the issue, is Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard SEAS and a professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School. His coauthors on the topic of field experiments include James Anderson, Philip S. Weld Professor of Applied Chemistry at Harvard SEAS and in Harvard's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology; and other colleagues at Harvard SEAS.
"The idea of conducting experiments to alter atmospheric processes is justifiably controversial, and our experiment, SCoPEx, is just a proposal," Keith emphasizes. "It will continue to evolve until it is funded, and we will only move ahead if the funding is substantially public, with a formal approval process and independent risk assessment."
With so much at stake, Keith believes transparency is essential. But the science of climate engineering is also widely misunderstood.
"People often claim that you cannot test geoengineering except by doing it at full scale," says Keith. "This is nonsense. It is possible to do a small-scale test, with quite low risks, that measures key aspects of the risk of geoengineering—in this case the risk of ozone loss."
Such controlled experiments, targeting key questions in atmospheric chemistry, Keith says, would reduce the number of "unknown unknowns" and help to inform science-based policy.
The experiment Keith and Anderson's team is proposing would involve only a tiny amount of material—a few hundred grams of sulfuric acid, an amount Keith says is roughly equivalent to what a typical commercial aircraft releases in a few minutes while flying in the stratosphere. It would provide important insight into how much SRM would reduce radiative heating, the concentration of water vapor in the stratosphere, and the processes that determine water vapor transport—which affects the concentration of ozone.
In addition to the experiment proposed in that publication, another paper coauthored by Keith and collaborators at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) collects and reviews a number of other experimental methods, to demonstrate the diversity of possible approaches.
"There is a wide range of experiments that could be done that would significantly reduce our uncertainty about the risks and effectiveness of solar geoengineering," Keith says. "Many could be done with very small local risks."
A third paper explores how solar geoengineering might actually be implemented, if an international consensus were reached, and suggests that a gradual implementation that aims to limit the rate of climate change would be a plausible strategy.
"Many people assume that solar geoengineering would be used to suddenly restore the Earth's climate to preindustrial temperatures," says Keith, "but it's very unlikely that it would make any policy sense to try to do so."
Keith also points to another paper in the Royal Society's special issue—one by Andy Parker at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School. Parker's paper furthers the discussion of governance and good practices in geoengineering research in the absence of both national legislation and international agreement, a topic raised last year in Science by Keith and Edward Parson of UCLA.
"The scientific aspects of geoengineering research must, by necessity, advance in tandem with a thorough discussion of the social science and policy," Keith warns. "Of course, these risks must also be weighed against the risk of doing nothing."For further information, see:"Stratospheric controlled perturbation experiment (SCoPEx): A small-scale experiment to improve understanding of the risks of solar geoengineering"
By John Dykema, project scientist at Harvard SEAS; David Keith, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard SEAS and professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School; James Anderson, Philip S. Weld Professor of Applied Chemistry at Harvard SEAS and in Harvard's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology; and Debra Weisenstein, research management specialist at Harvard SEAS.
"Field experiments on solar geoengineering: Report of a workshop exploring a representative research portfolio"
By David Keith; Riley Duren, chief systems engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at CalTech; and Douglas MacMartin, senior research associate and lecturer at CalTech.
"Solar geoengineering to limit the rate of temperature change"
By Douglas MacMartin; Ken Caldeira, senior scientist at the Carnegie Institute for Science and professor of environmental Earth system sciences at Stanford University; and David Keith.
"Governing solar geoengineering research as it leaves the laboratory"
By Andy Parker, associate of the Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School.             

Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK': Top Google engineers

QuoteWindmills, solar, tidal - all a 'false hope', say Stanford PhDs



Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that renewables will never permit the human race to cut CO₂ emissions to the levels demanded by climate activists. Whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.
Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren't guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or "technology" of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company. The duo were employed at Google on the RE<C project, which sought to enhance renewable technology to the point where it could produce energy more cheaply than coal.




RE<C was a failure, and Google closed it down after four years. Now, Koningstein and Fork have explained the conclusions they came to after a lengthy period of applying their considerable technological expertise to renewables, in an article posted at IEEE Spectrum.
The two men write:

At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today's renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope ...
Renewable energy technologies simply won't work; we need a fundamentally different approach.

One should note that RE<C didn't restrict itself to conventional renewable ideas like solar PV, windfarms, tidal, hydro etc. It also looked extensively into more radical notions such as solar-thermal, geothermal, "self-assembling" wind towers and so on and so forth. There's no get-out clause for renewables believers here.
Koningstein and Fork aren't alone. Whenever somebody with a decent grasp of maths and physics looks into the idea of a fully renewables-powered civilised future for the human race with a reasonably open mind, they normally come to the conclusion that it simply isn't feasible. Merely generating the relatively small proportion of our energy that we consume today in the form of electricity is already an insuperably difficult task for renewables: generating huge amounts more on top to carry out the tasks we do today using fossil-fuelled heat isn't even vaguely plausible.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms - and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive - which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably). This in turn means that everyone would become miserably poor and economic growth would cease (the more honest hardline greens admit this openly). That, however, means that such expensive luxuries as welfare states and pensioners, proper healthcare (watch out for that pandemic), reasonable public services, affordable manufactured goods and transport, decent personal hygiene, space programmes (watch out for the meteor!) etc etc would all have to go - none of those things are sustainable without economic growth.
So nobody's up for that. And yet, stalwart environmentalists like Koningstein and Fork - and many others - remain convinced that the dangers of carbon-driven warming are real and massive. Indeed the pair reference the famous NASA boffin Dr James Hansen, who is more or less the daddy of modern global warming fears, and say like him that we must move rapidly not just to lessened but to zero carbon emissions (and on top of that, suck a whole lot of CO₂ out of the air by such means as planting forests).
So, how is this to be done?

Mislim da očekuješ da se ritnem. Pa, evo:

Izgleda da je zaključak da sve treba da batalimo, da potrošimo ono šta nam je preostalo i da kupimo pinkle sa ovog sveta. Sve to da bi:


to enhance renewable technology to the point where it could produce energy more cheaply than coal.

Do kraja teksta naići ćemo i na standardne neoliberalne konstrukcije o stalnom privrednom rastu, o održanju svih civilizacijskih vrednosti koje već posedujemo i slične burgije. Ko bi uložio u istraživanja usmerena na opstanak, odricanje, usporavanje privrednih marifetluka i slično? Niko. Boli ih kita ako nema profita. Da ne govorim o bitci za preuzimanje resursa od onih koji ih nisu potrošili. Biti dominantan na Zemlji je važnije od opstanka makar svi izginuli. 

Da. Ono što deluje kao prirodan ishod ovakvog smera razmišljanja je odlučnije okretanje nuklearnoj energiji. A videćemo koliko je to dobro.

To oće i Iran, al' mu ne davaju.

2014. godina je najtoplija u zabeleženoj istoriji,vele ljudi koji znaju takve stvari:
Hottest Year Ever: 5 Places Where 2014 Temps Really Cooked

Quote

Though the official numbers aren't in for December, it's likely that 2014 will go down as the planet's hottest year on record, at least since scientists started keeping tabs on global temperature.

Data from three major climate-tracking groups agree: The combined land and ocean surface temperatures hit new highs this year, according to the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United Kingdom's Met Office and the World Meteorological Association.

If December's figures are at least 0.76 degrees Fahrenheit (0.42 degrees Celsius) higher than the 20th century average, 2014 will beat the warmest years on record, NOAA said this month. The January-through-November period has already been noted as the warmest 11-month period in the past 135 years, according to NOAA's November Global Climate Report. [8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World]

Even with the planet gunning for new global heat records, not all regions sweltered year-round in 2014. For instance, parts of North America suffered from extreme cold in January and February. That said, there were plenty of places where heat records fell this year. Here is a look at five places that will help push 2014 into the global warming record books.

   
• Australia: For the second year in a row, Australians saw heat records topple from the Gold Coast to the Coral Coast. The country kicked off January with an extreme heat wave; temperatures soared higher than 120 F (49 C). Heat waves in the autumn (March to May) and spring (September to November) also drove temperatures into the record books.
• Eastern Pacific Ocean: Toasty temperatures developed in the eastern Pacific Ocean, despite an El Niño that never appeared. The heat was especially notable off the western coast of the United States. Fishing boats spotted species well north of their range, such as a giant ocean sunfish offshore of Alaska. For the global ocean, the September to November sea surface temperature was 1.13 F (0.63 C) above the 20th century average of 60.7 F (16.0 C), surpassing the previous record by 0.11 F (0.06 C), according to NOAA.
• Siberia: Central Siberia defrosted in spring and early summer under temperatures more than 9 F (5 C) above its 1981 to 2010 average. Ice on the Ob River began to break up two weeks earlier than normal. The heat may have unleashed methane gas trapped in previously frozen permafrost, triggering underground explosions that formed spectacularly deep holes.
• California: The long-running drought in California was made worse in 2014 by record heat. The first 10 months of 2014 were the warmest in California's history since 1895, further burdening the state's water demands.
• Northern Europe: The same weather pattern that froze North America in early 2014 brought an unusually warm spring to countries including Denmark, Norway and Turkey. The sultry spring was the warmest in a century or more in these countries. In addition, January to October was the warmest 10-month period on record for Central England since 1659, and the warmest such period for the Netherlands since 1706.

A evo i interesantne statistike koja podseća koliko bi autentičan napor da se preokrene trend gobalnog zagrevanja bio zaista težak za pre svega razvijene zemlje. Naime, čak dva i po procenta svog ugljendioksida koji se ispusti u atmosferu dolazi izavionkih, er, auspuha. Što znači, kada bi avioindustrija bila država, bila bi u prvih deset zagađivača na svetu. Na linku imaju i neki korisni grafikoni pa baciti pogled:

Every Time You Fly, You Trash The Planet — And There's No Easy Fix

Quote

When the latest international Climate Conference wrapped up in Lima, Peru, last month, delegates boarded their flights home without much official discussion of how the planes that shuttled them to the meeting had altered the climate.

Aircraft currently contribute about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. That might not seem like much, but if the aviation industry were a country, it would be one of the world's top 10 emitters of CO2. And its emissions are projected to grow between two and four times by 2050 without policy interventions.

Left unchecked, aviation emissions could help push global warming over the 2 degrees celsius line. But cutting aviation's impact poses a daunting challenge.

"Aviation is a global industry. People want global solutions," said Daniel Rutherford, an environmental engineer at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), an independent nonprofit. Planes often take off in one country and land in another, making country-by-country regulations impractical. For this reason, the task of addressing aviation's climate consequences has fallen to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the United Nations agency in charge of negotiating aviation agreements.

Planes don't just release carbon dioxide, they also emit nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides and black carbon, as well as water vapor that can form heat-trapping clouds, said Rutherford, who serves as a technical observer to ICAO's working groups on climate issues. These emissions take place in the upper troposphere, where their effects are magnified. When this so-called radiative forcing effect is taken into account, aviation emissions produce about 2.7 times the warming effects of CO2 alone, according to estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Atmosfair, a German organization that sells "offsets" for people looking to compensate for the flights they take, offers a calculator that takes radiative forcing into account. Its calculations show that a roundtrip flight from, say, Denver to New York produces the equivalent of nearly a year's worth of emissions from a car, and more than the annual emissions of an average person living in India.

Basic physics means there's no way around expending fuel to get a plane in the air. "Aircraft are heavy, so it takes a lot of energy to get them off the ground," said Alice Bows-Larkin, an atmospheric scientist at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester. New aircraft designs can help, but even when new technologies come along, they may take years to reach critical mass in the fleet, because airplanes can last 30 years or more. (And aircraft retired from U.S. fleets often remain in the air when they're acquired by airlines elsewhere.)

Fuel represents airlines' No. 1 cost, so they're highly motivated to optimize fuel efficiency, said Nancy Young, vice president for environment at Airlines for America, an industry trade group. American carriers have already posted impressive efficiency gains of 120 percent since 1978, and that means there isn't much low-hanging fruit left.

Undaunted, ICAO has pledged to increase fleet fuel efficiency by 1.5 percent per year up to 2020, and it aims for "carbon-neutral growth" after that, with the ultimate goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 50 percent compared to 2005 levels by 2050. The plan depends on improvements in three areas — fuels, aircraft technology and operations — as well as the introduction of so called "market-based mechanisms," such as carbon offsets.

On the fuels front, work is underway to develop jet fuel from alternative sources such as algae, switch grass and camelina, but it's uncertain whether these fuels can be created at a rate that meets demand. In 2011, Lufthansa used biofuel on more than 1,100 short-haul flights, but it halted the program after failing to find a reliable source of the fuel. Still, other efforts are underway. United Airlines will start using biofuel on flights out of Los Angeles beginning in the first quarter of 2015 and Southwest also just inked a deal to purchase an alternative fuel made from organic waste.

Meanwhile, incremental changes to aircraft, such as winglets (wing tips that point upward, to reduce drag) and revamped jet engines, are expected to improve fuel efficiency by about 15 to 25 percent by 2020, said Rutherford, the ICCT engineer. Added together with other improvements and more radical aircraft designs, such as a blended wing design that integrates the aircraft body into the wing, these new technologies could eventually triple efficiency, he said.

Operations also offer the potential for gains. The FAA's NextGen navigation system aims to improve traffic flow through airspace and airports by ensuring that planes are routed via the most efficient path, and by switching over to satellite, rather than ground-based radar navigation systems. One NextGen initiative, the Seattle Greener Skies project, is expected to cut carbon emissions equivalent to taking 4,100 cars off the road.

Despite these promising developments, the numbers show that ICAO's emissions targets will be impossible to achieve. ICAO readily acknowledges this, which is why it has agreed to develop a global market-based measure to address emissions, a plan its members agreed to at their 2013 assembly in Montreal. The plan would allow the aviation sector to buy the right to emit greenhouse gases from other industries, in the form of carbon credits.¹ Such a plan is absolutely necessary if ICAO is to meet its targets, because nothing else can bring emissions into line.

The charts below (taken from a report by researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University) show the emission reductions projected for various combinations of approaches: technology and operations, biofuel and emissions trading (MBM-ETS, for market-based measures and emissions trading systems in the chart). These approaches are compared to three objectives (based on the ICAO plan) — a 2 percent per year gain in efficiency, carbon-neutral growth from 2020 and a reduction to 2005 emission levels. Even added together, none of these approaches comes close to meeting the latter two goals.
The European Union's Emissions Trading System (ETS) was set to include aviation emissions, which would have forced U.S. airlines that take off and land in the EU to participate. But after Congress and President Obama blocked American carriers from complying with the rules, the EU backed off.

Despite such political resistance, the U.S. may soon enact new limits on aviation emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency is working on rules to address carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft after environmental groups forced the agency's hand by suing to regulate aviation emissions as pollutants. The EPA is currently scheduled to propose its findings in late April this year and then make final determinations sometime in the spring of 2016. The U.S. is responsible for about a third of global aviation emissions, so action by the EPA would be "very significant," Rutherford said, though how ambitious the EPA's standards might be remains an open question.

Young's group expects that the EPA standards will align with the CO2 standards ICAO is currently formulating, due for release in 2016. "There's no one silver bullet — it's silver buckshot," she said. "You have to shoot a lot of these pellets." She said reducing emissions can be done without making flights prohibitively expensive.

One option that's not part of ICAO's plan is reducing demand for flights. Doing so might sound radical, but a sober look at the numbers shows that it may be necessary. Bows-Larkin recently published an analysis concluding that the aviation industry is placing too much hope on emissions trading to help it attain CO2 reductions that would keep it in line with the 2 degrees goal for limiting global warming. Achieving this goal, she concluded, will require flying less.

"Flight is the most carbon-intensive activity that we can do," said Bows-Larkin, who hasn't flown since 2005. Carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere today can stick around for a hundred years, and it can't easily be recaptured. The urgency of the problem requires a solution sooner rather than later, she said. "Time is massively against us."

Majkl Man (ne taj, nego onaj sa hokejaškim štapom) ima rad o tome kako interesne grupe ućutkuju naučnike kada se iznosi priča koja njima ne odgovara:



The Serengeti strategy: How special interests try to intimidate scientists, and how best to fight back


Abstrakt:

QuoteMuch as lions on the Serengeti seek out vulnerable zebras at the edge of a herd, special interests faced with
adverse scientific evidence often target individual scientists rather than take on an entire scientific field at once.
Part of the reasoning behind this approach is that it is easier to bring down individuals than an entire group of
scientists, and it still serves the larger aim: to dismiss, obscure, and misrepresent well-established science and
its implications. In addition, such highly visible tactics create an atmosphere of intimidation that discourages
other scientists from conveying their researchÕs implications to the public. This ÒSerengeti strategyÓ is often
employed wherever there is a strong and widespread consensus among the worldÕs scientists about the under-
lying cold, hard facts of a field, whether the subject be evolution, ozone depletion, the environmental impacts of
DDT, the health effects of smoking, or human-caused climate change. The goal is to attack those researchers
whose findings are inconvenient, rather than debate the findings themselves. This article draws upon the
authorÕs own experience to examine the ÒSerengeti strategy,Ó and offers possible countermeasures to such
orchestrated campaigns. It examines what responses by scientists have been most successful, and how to
combat the doubt-sowing that industry has done regarding the science behind climate change and other fields.

How Climate Change Denial Still Gets Published in Peer-Reviewed Journals

Quote
Meet one of the world's leading climate change skeptics.
Though he is not a scientist, Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brentley, is a prolific and ​vocal opponent of mainstream climatology. Once a Special Adviser to Margaret Thatcher, he now spends much of his time trumpeting conservative causes. He recently claimed there has been no warming for 18 years, and penned a column blaming gay people for AIDS and explaining that homosexuals have sex with up to 20,000 partners each. Practicing scientists have called his assertions "very misleading," "profoundly wrong," and "simply false." Not long ago, the House of Lords took the "unprecedented" step of demanding Monckton stop calling himself a lord.
Now Monckton has published a study in a peer-reviewed science journal, the Chinese Science Bulletin. He claims that this work refutes the robust body of climate science agreed upon by what he calls "the extremists at the IPCC," or the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, which is comprised of hundreds of the world's top climate scientists. Mainstream climate science projects that the world is heading for 3-5˚C temperature rise by the century's end. Monckton says the warming will be significantly less than 1˚C, due to errors in climate modelers' assumptions.
"The true-believers know that this paper spells doom for them," he wrote me in an email. "This paper may well mark the end of the climate scare."
But Monckton is not a climatologist—he's a journalist, a classics student, and a clever builder of math puzzles. And the study has already been harshly criticized by physicists and climate scientists. So how did he get it published in a serious academic journal? That's what Gavin Schmidt wants to know. Schmidt is the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and is one of the world's leading authorities on climate change.
"I can't speak to the peer review practice at that journal," he told me in an email, "you'd need to ask them. However, the Monckton et. al paper is complete trash." Climate science is an intensely scrutinized, incredibly robust field, after all; there is a veritable mountain of evidence that supports the IPCC's claims, which each of which are fiercely pored-over themselves. In 2015, there are ​vanishingly few scientists who actually question the fundamentals of climate science.
"The model they use is not new," Schmidt continued, "and they arbitrarily restrict its parameters and then declare all other models wrong."
Which isn't surprising, given that Monckton is not a scientist. In fact, he has been repeatedly lambasted by actual scientists for distorting their research: Skeptical Science was moved to publish an entire list of scientists whose work Monckton has cited in order to claim that climate change isn't happening, and who have explicitly rejected his depiction of their work. It is a long list.
It seems unlikely that Monckton's latest study, whose most prestigious co-author is Willie Soon, a Harvard researcher whose work is amply bankrolled by oil and coal companies, will inspire their confidence. "It will be completely ignored by scientists," Schmidt says, "except as an example that, yes, you can get anything published if you try hard enough."
Therein lies the issue. Monckton's paper, which is titled Why Models Run Hot: Results of an Irreducibly Simple Climate Model, was the very first study announced in today's EurekAlert blast, the widely-read newsletter that science journalists subscribe to in order to keep abreast of upcoming studies. EurekAlert doesn't vet its stories for quality, and warns as much; and it's a fact of modern life that junk science gets vacuumed up alongside respectable research. The media is apt to treat it as such, especially outlets with a specific ideological bent.


Nobody seems to know a whole lot about Science Bulletin, which dropped "Chinese" from its name this year. It is co-sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and it's published by Springer, one of the major for-profit scientific publishers. All of which to say, this isn't simply a joke science rag, though it's a far cry from Science or Nature.
Monckton insists that it was examined by three reviewers: "After a commendably short review period of just three months, the paper was accepted for publication and has now been published," he told me. "We were most impressed with the fact that the reviewers, despite initial misgivings, were willing to recognize after a closer look that we had legitimate grounds to question the official profiteers of doom."
Whoever those reviewers are, their work is now being denounced by NASA and the scientific establishment. It raises the question: How hard did they look?
Last year, a "sting" headed up by Science, in which an obviously faulty paper was submitted to 304 journals, saw nearly half accept the junk science for publication. Science targeted the open access journals that charge researchers fees for publication.I reached out to John Bohannon, PhD, the Science correspondent behind the sting, and he said that he hadn't heard of Science Bulletin, and it didn't even make it onto his radar for investigation. 
Furthermore, a random-paper-generating software successfully submitted scores of papers comprised of complete gibberish to journals; two major scientific publishers had to withdraw a total of 120 studies that had already been approved as a result. One of those publishers was Springer. Monckton acknowledges that there was a publication fee, as well as an open access fee, which was covered by the Heartland Institute, and organization perhaps best known for displaying a billboard that compared those who believed in climate change to Charles Manson. (I have requested comment from Science Bulletin to ask about the review process for this particular paper,and will update if and when I hear back.)
"No one is happy about the state of peer review, but it's not clear what the solution will be," Bohannon told me in an email. "One possibility is to do peer review after publication, rather than before. If a paper is both important and bad science, then it will get sorted out quickly. So maybe what we see happening online to the Monckton et al. paper is a glimpse at the future of peer review: public, non-anonymous, fast, and vicious."
The entire episode is a reminder that the peer review process is in a moment of crisis, and that the science establishment is still grappling with globalization, digitization, and the proliferation of for-profit online journals. It is useful in considering how climate denial continues to trickle into the bloodstream, even when the world's top agencies all agree that humans are warming the globe, and that, as a result, last year ​was the hottest ever recorded.
Once a paper is accepted for peer review, it obtains a degree of respectability—even if its shoddy claims argue the precise opposite. It's just ​one more way that bad science, and climate denial, stumbles on.

Science by democracy doesn't work

Jedan od prominentnijih poricatelja antropogenih klimackih promena je do sada uzeo lepe pare od energetskih korporacija, a to nije pominjao u svojim radovima. Nije da to nešto odma znači ali nije zgoreg znati.


Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher

Quote
For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity.
One of the names they invoke most often is Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims that variations in the sun's energy can largely explain recent global warming. He has often appeared on conservative news programs, testified before Congress and in state capitals, and starred at conferences of people who deny the risks of global warming.
But newly released documents show the extent to which Dr. Soon's work has been tied to funding he received from corporate interests.
He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.


The documents show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as "deliverables" that he completed in exchange for their money. He used the same term to describe testimony he prepared for Congress.
Though Dr. Soon did not respond to questions about the documents, he has long stated that his corporate funding has not influenced his scientific findings.
The documents were obtained by Greenpeace, the environmental group, under the Freedom of Information Act. Greenpeace and an allied group, the Climate Investigations Center, shared them with several news organizations last week.
The documents shed light on the role of scientists like Dr. Soon in fostering public debate over whether human activity is causing global warming. The vast majority of experts have concluded that it is and that greenhouse emissions pose long-term risks to civilization.
Historians and sociologists of science say that since the tobacco wars of the 1960s, corporations trying to block legislation that hurts their interests have employed a strategy of creating the appearance of scientific doubt, usually with the help of ostensibly independent researchers who accept industry funding.
Fossil-fuel interests have followed this approach for years, but the mechanics of their activities remained largely hidden.
"The whole doubt-mongering strategy relies on creating the impression of scientific debate," said Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University and the co-author of "Merchants of Doubt," a book about such campaigns. "Willie Soon is playing a role in a certain kind of political theater."
Environmentalists have long questioned Dr. Soon's work, and his acceptance of funding from the fossil-fuel industry was previously known. But the full extent of the links was not; the documents show that corporate contributions were tied to specific papers and were not disclosed, as required by modern standards of publishing.Continue reading the main story "What it shows is the continuation of a long-term campaign by specific fossil-fuel companies and interests to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change," said Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center, a group funded by foundations seeking to limit the risks of climate change.
Charles R. Alcock, director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, acknowledged on Friday that Dr. Soon had violated the disclosure standards of some journals.
"I think that's inappropriate behavior," Dr. Alcock said. "This frankly becomes a personnel matter, which we have to handle with Dr. Soon internally."
Dr. Soon is employed by the Smithsonian Institution, which jointly sponsors the astrophysics center with Harvard.
"I am aware of the situation with Willie Soon, and I'm very concerned about it," W. John Kress, interim under secretary for science at the Smithsonian in Washington, said on Friday. "We are checking into this ourselves."
Dr. Soon rarely grants interviews to reporters, and he did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls last week; nor did he respond to an interview request conveyed to him by his employer. In past public appearances, he has reacted angrily to questions about his funding sources, but then acknowledged some corporate ties and said that they had not altered his scientific findings.
"I write proposals; I let them decide whether to fund me or not," he said at an event in Madison, Wis., in 2013. "If they choose to fund me, I'm happy to receive it." A moment later, he added, "I would never be motivated by money for anything."
The newly disclosed documents, plus additional documents compiled by Greenpeace over the last four years, show that at least $409,000 of Dr. Soon's funding in the past decade came from Southern Company Services, a subsidiary of the Southern Company, based in Atlanta.
Southern is one of the largest utility holding companies in the country, with huge investments in coal-burning power plants. The company has spent heavily over many years to lobby against greenhouse-gas regulations in Washington. More recently, it has spent significant money to research ways to limit emissions.
"Southern Company funds a broad range of research on a number of topics that have potentially significant public-policy implications for our business," said Jeannice M. Hall, a spokeswoman. The company declined to answer detailed questions about its funding of Dr. Soon's research.
Dr. Soon also received at least $230,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. (Mr. Koch's fortune derives partly from oil refining.) However, other companies and industry groups that once supported Dr. Soon, including Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute, appear to have eliminated their grants to him in recent years.
As the oil-industry contributions fell, Dr. Soon started receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars through DonorsTrust, an organization based in Alexandria, Va., that accepts money from donors who wish to remain anonymous, then funnels it to various conservative causes.Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Mass., is a joint venture between Harvard and the Smithsonian Institution, housing some 300 scientists from both institutions. Because the Smithsonian is a government agency, Greenpeace was able to request that Dr. Soon's correspondence and grant agreements be released under the Freedom of Information Act. Continue reading the main story  Recent Comments     John Yesterday   Why is it that the findings of scientific research depend more on who sponsors the science than the conclusions reached by the research...
    James Wilson Yesterday  Once S Fred Singer debated Sherry Rowland about ozone depletion on NPR.  Every atmospheric scientist I talked to was amused that Rowland had...
    Drew Yesterday  This sounds like bad science so I don't see how protecting Dr. Soon is protecting academic freedom.  He should just go directly to work for...
   

   
• See All Comments

Though often described on conservative news programs as a "Harvard astrophysicist," Dr. Soon is not an astrophysicist and has never been employed by Harvard. He is a part-time employee of the Smithsonian Institution with a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering. He has received little federal research money over the past decade and is thus responsible for bringing in his own funds, including his salary.
Though he has little formal training in climatology, Dr. Soon has for years published papers trying to show that variations in the sun's energy can explain most recent global warming. His thesis is that human activity has played a relatively small role in causing climate change.
Many experts in the field say that Dr. Soon uses out-of-date data, publishes spurious correlations between solar output and climate indicators, and does not take account of the evidence implicating emissions from human behavior in climate change.
Gavin A. Schmidt, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, a NASA division that studies climate change, said that the sun had probably accounted for no more than 10 percent of recent global warming and that greenhouse gases produced by human activity explained most of it.
"The science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless," Dr. Schmidt said.
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, whose scientists focus largely on understanding distant stars and galaxies, routinely distances itself from Dr. Soon's findings. The Smithsonian has also published a statement accepting the scientific consensus on climate change.
Dr. Alcock said that, aside from the disclosure issue, he thought it was important to protect Dr. Soon's academic freedom, even if most of his colleagues disagreed with his findings.
Dr. Soon has found a warm welcome among politicians in Washington and state capitals who try to block climate action. United States Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who claims that climate change is a global scientific hoax, has repeatedly cited Dr. Soon's work over the years.
In a Senate debate last month, Mr. Inhofe pointed to a poster with photos of scientists questioning the climate-change consensus, including Dr. Soon. "These are scientists that cannot be challenged," the senator said. A spokeswoman for the senator said Friday that he was traveling and could not be reached for comment.
As of late last week, most of the journals in which Dr. Soon's work had appeared were not aware of the newly disclosed documents. The Climate Investigations Center is planning to notify them over the coming week. Several journals advised of the situation by The New York Times said they would look into the matter.
Robert J. Strangeway, the editor of a journal that published three of Dr. Soon's papers, said that editors relied on authors to be candid about any conflicts of interest. "We assume that when people put stuff in a paper, or anywhere else, they're basically being honest," said Dr. Strangeway, editor of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics.
Dr. Oreskes, the Harvard science historian, said that academic institutions and scientific journals had been too lax in recent decades in ferreting out dubious research created to serve a corporate agenda.
"I think universities desperately need to look more closely at this issue," Dr. Oreskes said. She added that Dr. Soon's papers omitting disclosure of his corporate funding should be retracted by the journals that published them.

Solar in California's urban areas could provide 5 times the power the state needs

Quote
The amount of energy that could be produced through solar equipment constructed on or around existing infrastructure in California would easily exceed the state's demands, according to a new study.
Currently, solar energy deployments are complicated by the need to find space for equipment without significantly altering the surrounding area.
The study, from the Carnegie Institution for Science, found that the amount of energy that could be generated from solar installations on and around existing infrastructure in California would exceed the state's demand three to five times over.


The research showed that by using areas around existing infrastructure and brownfields, California could substantially how much energy it gets from solar, without converting natural habitat and causing harm -- and without moving the installations to remote locations. The researchers found that using small- and utility-scale solar power in and around developed areas could generate up to 15,000 terawatt-hours (trillion watt hours) of energy a year using photovoltaic technology, and 6,000 terrawatt-hours of energy a year using concentrating solar power technology.
Published today in the scientific journal Nature, the study claims that about 8% of California's terrestrial surfaces have been developed, ranging from cities and buildings to park spaces. Residential and commercial rooftops, it found, present plenty of opportunity for power generation through small- and utility-scale solar power installations. Other urban spaces, such as parks, also offer untapped areas for  installations.
The research was performed by post-doctoral environmental earth scientist Rebecca Hernandez (now at the University of California, Berkley), along with researchers Madison Hoffacker, and Chris Field.
Overall, the team of three researchers found that California has about 6.7 million acres of land that is compatible for photovoltaic solar construction and about 1.6 million acres compatible for concentrating solar power. There is an additional 13.8 million acres that is potentially compatible for photovoltaic solar energy development with minimal environmental impact and 6.7 million acres that would be compatible for concentrating solar power development.
"Integrating solar facilities into the urban and suburban environment causes the least amount of land-cover change and the lowest environmental impact," Hernandez said in a statement.




Additionally, there is opportunity for solar energy deployments in undeveloped sites that are not ecologically sensitive or federally protected, such as degraded lands like  salt-saturated areas near roads and land around existing transmission lines.
This study involved the use of two kinds of solar tech: photovoltaics, which use semiconductor technology on solar panels, and concentrating solar power, which uses curved mirrors to focus the sun's rays to generate steam to power an electrical turbine.
A mix of both options would be possible, the study states, depending on the particular areas of installation, whether on a rooftop, in a park, on degraded lands or anywhere else deemed compatible or potentially compatible.
"As California works to meet requirements that 33% of retail electricity be provided by renewable sources by 2020 and that greenhouse-gas emissions be 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, our research can help policymakers, developers, and energy stakeholders make informed decisions," said Field, director of Carnegie's Department of Global Ecology. "Furthermore, our findings have implications for other states and countries with similarly precious environmental resources and infrastructural constraints."

Kostarikanci su carevi. ne samo što ne troše pare na imanje vojske, nego, evo, sad, i slave jubilej od 75 dana koje je cela zemlja provela trošeći isključivo obnovljive izvore energije:


Costa Rica goes 75 days powering itself using only renewable energy

QuoteCosta Rica has achieved a clean energy milestone by using 100 per cent renewable energy for a record 75 days in a row.
   The feat was achieved thanks to heavy rainfall, which powered four hydroelectric plants in the first three months of the year, the state-run Costa Rican Electricity Institute said.
No fossil fuels have been burnt to generate electricity since December 2014, in the state which is renowned for its clean energy policies.
While Costa Rica is a small country, with a popular of about 4.8 million people, it has made great strides in its use of renewable energy.
Last year 80 per cent of the energy used came from hydropower, while geothermal energy made up about 10 per cent of the mix in the volcano-strewn nation.

Currently 94 per cent of Costa Rica's energy needs are met by renewables. New geothermal projects are already in the planning stages, to ensure that the Central American state does not have to rely on fossil fuels in the future.


The government approved a US$958 million geothermal project in mid-2014.
The first plant, when completed, is expected to produce 55 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 55,000 homes. A further two 50 megawatt plants will be built nearby.
Jake Richardson, of Clean Technica, said it was important the country did not become too dependent on hydropower.
"It's good news that more geothermal will be coming on board, as there are obvious downsides of being too reliant on hydropower, especially run-of-the-river systems, which can be hindered by seasonal changes in water flow," he told Science Alert.
"Droughts can also severely impact power supplies. And there are also some environmental downsides to hydroelectric dams more generally, namely the impact on riparian ecosystems and passing fish."
It helps that Costa Rica, which aims to be carbon-neutral by 2021, has excellent infrastructure.
The World Economic Forum ranked the country second in Latin America, behind Uruguay, for its electricity and telecommunications infrastructure in its 2014 Global Competitiveness Index.
In a sign of how committed Costa Rica is to renewables the government has decided not to exploit rich oil deposits - discovered along the country's Caribbean coast - for environmental reasons.

Poslednja rečenica je pogotovo zanimljiva. Znajući kakva jagma vlada za naftom (ignorišimo trenutni strateški smer njenog pojeftinjavanja da bi se oslabila Rusija) i da Kosta Rika nema armiju, nije besmisleno pitati se kada će neko da kaže "Pabrate, ako oni neće, ima ko oće."

Malo eshatološkog diskursa na uskrs:

The Last Time Oceans Got This Acidic This Fast, 96% of Marine Life Went Extinct

Quote

The biggest extinction event in planetary history was driven by the rapid acidification of our oceans, a new study concl​udes. So much carbon was released into the atmosphere, and the oceans absorbed so much of it so quickly, that marine life simply died off, from the bottom of the food chain up.
That doesn't bode well for the present, given the disturbingly similar rate that our seas are acidifying right now. Parts of the Pacific, for instance, are already so acidic that sea snails' shells begin dissolving as soon as they're born.
The biggest die-off in history, the Permian Extinction event, aka the Great Dying, extinguished over 90 percent of the planet's species—and 96 percent of marine species. A lot of theories have been put forward about why and how, exactly, the vast majority of Earth life went belly up 252 million years ago, but the new study, published in Science, offers some compelling evidence acidification was a key driver.
A team led by University of Edinburgh researchers collected rocks in the United Arab Emirates that were on the seafloor hundreds of millions of years ago, and used the boron isotopes found within to model the changing levels of acidification in our prehistoric oceans. Through this "combined geochemical, geological, and modeling approach," the scientists say, they were able to accurately model the series of "perturbations" that unfolded in the era.
They now believe that a series of gigantic volcanic eruptions in the Siberian Trap spewed a great fountain of carbon into the atmosphere over a period of tens of thousands of years. This was the first phase of the extinction event, in which terrestrial life began to die out.
The study explains that the second phase of the event happened much more quickly. "During the second extinction pulse, however, a rapid and large injection of carbon caused an abrupt acidification event that drove the preferential loss of heavily calcified marine biota," the authors write.
So does this study mean we should be especially worried about the phenomenon taking hold today?
"Yes," said Dr. Rachel Wood, a professor of carbonate geoscience at the University of Edinburgh and one of the paper's authors.
"We are concerned about modern ocean acidification," she told me in an email. "Although the amount of carbon added to the atmosphere that triggered the mass extinction was probably greater than today's fossil fuel reserves, the rate at which the carbon was released was at a rate similar to modern emissions."
In other words, the Siberian Traps probably spewed out more carbon in total, but we're spewing out just as fast. And that's overwhelming the planetary equilibrium.
"This fast rate of release was a critical factor driving ocean acidification," Wood said.
Why?
"The rate of release is critical because the oceans absorb a lot of the carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, around 30 percent of the carbon dioxide released by humans," Wood said. "To achieve chemical equilibrium, some of this CO2 reacts with the water to form carbonic acid. Some of these molecules react with a water molecule to give a bicarbonate ion and a hydronium ion, thus increasing ocean 'acidity' (H+ ion concentration)."
Marine animals whose skeletons are comprised of calcium carbonate—and that's a lot of them (think snails, coral), which form a crucial part of the food chain—dissolved or couldn't form in the first place. And that is what's happening today.
"Between 1751 and 1994, surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.25 to 8.14, representing an increase of almost 30 percent in H+ ion concentration in the world's oceans," Wood said.
That's a major uptick in ocean acidity in a relatively short amount of time, and it's happening because humans have burned fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas with reckless abandon since the Industrial Revolution. That's fueling climate change, of course, as well as its less-discussed, but potentially equally cataclysmic sibling, ocean acidification.
"Scientists have long suspected that an ocean acidification event occurred during the greatest mass extinction of all time, but direct evidence has been lacking until now," study coordinator Dr. Matthew Clarkson said in a statement. "This is a worrying finding, considering that we can already see an increase in ocean acidity today that is the result of human carbon emissions."
Much of marine life is already in grave danger from acidification. It's contributing to the bleaching of coral reefs around the world, and, as mentioned before, it's killing sea snails in the Pacific. If it worsens, acidification could threaten the whole of the marine biosphere, and, obviously, the land-dwelling creatures that depend on it too.
In 2013, marine scientists released a "State of the Oceans" report that found that the rate of current acidification was "unprecedented." They noted that the seas were acidifying faster than any point in the last 300 million years. That study didn't take into account the new data, of course, but that's the timeline we're dealing with: The last time the oceans were so acidic was in the midst of the greatest extinction in the history of the world.

I da bez gubljenja koraka vidimo i meditaciju o tome da li isključivanje sebe i svog domaćinstva sa centralizovane energetske mreže zaista spasava planetu. Meni se dopada što ovaj tekst podseća na neke teme koje smo već pominjali, na primer da je filozofija kako svaka individua mora da uradi svoj deo da bi se usporile/ preokrenule klimacke promene načelno pozitivna, ali da zapravo zamagljuje činjenicu da individue nisu one koje direktno te promene izazivaju, već da je to industrijska civilizacija koja se fundamentalno menja ozbiljnim poltičkim naporom širokog fronta sličnomislećih individua, a ne kupovinom dva solana panela:

Does going "off the grid" actually help the climate?

Quote
On February 11, CEO Elon Musk of Tesla Motors said that his company would soon be unveiling plans for a battery that could power your home, and that production could begin as early as August. The kind of in-house energy storage he is proposing could help make renewables a bigger part of the global supply. But headlines announcing that a Tesla battery "could take your home off the grid" spread misconceptions about what it takes to be self-sufficient—and stop global warming.
If you're an average American, you can't go "off the grid" simply by mounting a few solar panels on your roof, installing a battery in your basement, and plugging your car into an electrical outlet to refuel it. That is like calling yourself a vegetarian even though you eat chicken or fish when it suits you.
Truly going off the grid usually means a commitment to using far less energy than most Americans: for example, purchasing extremely efficient appliances, scheduling energy usage, and living without a beer fridge or big-screen television or clothes dryer. Taking personal steps to conserve energy is commendable. But placing the responsibility for climate action on individuals, and encouraging an every-man-for-himself approach, may actually work against some energy solutions and do little to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions.
No compromises. While a Tesla home battery might appeal to someone living modestly in a remote cabin, it's more likely to be purchased by a person like Jason Hughes, a day trader who apparently couldn't wait for the off-the-shelf version. Hughes is spending $20,000 and countless hours to convert a Tesla car battery into an energy storage system for his home.
He would probably fit in better at a "prepper" convention—a meeting of survivalists getting ready for disaster—than at the Paris climate talks later this year. Responding to questions about the YouTube video of his battery hack, Hughes wrote: "My goal is to basically have a Tesla-style 'no compromises' off-grid setup...thus a power hungry one."
Some people just like the idea of being off the grid and don't mind paying extra for it. It has a certain prestige, the way that driving a Tesla S makes you stand out in a crowd. A Tesla home battery will probably make its owner feel more invincible than and superior to a neighbor with a generator in his garage.
The price for the Tesla battery hasn't been announced yet. But if it's anything like the Tesla S car, which has a price tag ranging from $71,070 to $105,670, it will be a luxury item. Even if everyone could afford one, it's not clear where the lithium and other raw materials for all those batteries would come from.
No man is an island. Home batteries may be great for power outages, but it's unclear whether they will do much to mitigate global warming. In fact, they could undermine large-scale efforts to combat climate change, by isolating energy production and usage rather than sharing it efficiently within a network.
While Tesla owners, especially those who generate their own solar power, might have the greenest of intentions, they live in a virtual gated community that excludes most of humanity. And by focusing their considerable resources on individual empowerment rather than on systemic issues, they make global warming a matter of consumer choice rather than of political mobilization and community involvement. Markus Giesler, an associate professor of marketing at York University in Toronto, writing about how the World Economic Forum has shifted the burden for solving global warming and other problems away from government and business, calls this phenomenon "consumer responsibilization."
Just as the "crying Indian" anti-littering ad of the 1970s implied that pollution was the fault of individuals rather than corporations, Tesla seems to be suggesting that the climate crisis is something Americans should solve on their own rather than calling fossil fuel companies to account, or pressing elected officials about why the Energy Department's fiscal year 2016 budget request would spend only $2.7 billion on energy efficiency and renewables—but a whopping $18.9 billion on nuclear defense activities.
The solar revolution. It's great that California and a few other states are now generating a significant percentage of their electricity from solar power. But most of the growth in California has come from a handful of utility-scale projects, which together have more than twice the capacity of the almost 250,000 solar projects installed on homes and businesses.
While distributed energy generation has some distinct advantages—it eliminates transmission inefficiencies and doesn't require sacrificing huge tracts of wilderness to energy industrialization—individuals alone cannot solve the massive problem of climate change. Especially if they are individuals like Jason Hughes, who envision going "off the grid" without dramatically reducing their energy consumption.
Few homeowners and businesspeople would be interested in installing solar systems if most states did not require "net metering," which allows a customer's electricity meter to run backward as well as forward: You can sell electricity to the local utility when you produce more than you need, and buy it when you run short. In effect, the grid acts like a giant battery—one that you don't have to purchase or maintain. You just have to stay on the grid.
A utility "death spiral"? Net metering encourages consumers to make their own electricity, which is a good thing because it reduces the amount of electricity that must be generated elsewhere, but it is not without complications. As renewable energy production increases, utilities are complaining that they should not have to bear all the costs of backing up intermittent solar and wind power with steadier energy sources: hydropower, nuclear, coal, and natural gas. Turning conventional power plants on and off to match the variability of the sun or wind cuts into efficiency and increases greenhouse gas emissions, undermining the raison d'etre of renewables.
The utilities argue that renewable energy producers who want to sell electricity to the grid should help pay for backup power. Otherwise, that cost falls on a shrinking base of customers, forcing the utility to raise prices. Residential and business customers may then begin defecting in even larger numbers, raising the specter of a so-called "utility death spiral." That isn't likely to happen anytime soon, but utilities do need to update their business models with better provisions for load balancing and renewable energy storage.
If the future owners of Tesla home batteries remain on the grid, for example, utilities could pay them to store energy for others as well as for themselves. Teslas and other electric cars, parked at homes or businesses during most hours, could also become part of the grid's giant "battery."
Distributed energy storage. Some automobile manufacturers are already experimenting with using cars for energy storage. Nissan is currently testing a "Leaf to Home" system that would allow the battery in a Leaf car to power an average Japanese household (which uses about one-third the electricity of an American household) for about two days. Toyota has announced that it will start selling the Mirai, a hydrogen fuel cell car with a battery that can reportedly power a Japanese home for up to a week when fully charged, in California. And Honda has designed an experimental house that can be powered by an electric car parked in its garage.
None of these projects is intended for homes that are off the grid. They are primarily designed to help owners handle power outages. But why not use them to tackle the climate emergency?
With a smarter grid, excess electricity generated by solar panels and wind turbines could be distributed to a network of on-the-grid home and car batteries. Some utilities have also experimented with using home water heaters as an economical substitute for batteries: turning them on by remote control to store excess power (in the form of heat), or off to relieve loads when the grid is experiencing heavy demand (while still providing hot water when customers need it).
Like car batteries, home water heaters are dormant for most of the day. It makes more sense, and costs less, to put this existing infrastructure to work than to build huge new energy storage facilities. But it's not yet clear whether a network of smart water heaters, batteries, and other devices would be economical and efficient. Conserving energy is always a cheaper option than building or expanding energy infrastructure.
Americans are experts at wasting infrastructure, though: Just look at all the cars sitting idle in driveways and parking lots, and all the traffic jams caused by five-passenger vehicles with only one person in each of them. Purchasing expensive batteries only to reserve them for occasional emergency use, or to hoard electricity for a no-compromises lifestyle, would be another case study in wastefulness. Small solar systems with battery backups are a good solution for the world's 1.3 billion people who have no electricity, and Musk is an investor in one such enterprise in Tanzania. But Americans need to concern themselves more with conservation and global climate solutions than with the fantasy of achieving self-sufficiency through consumerism.
 

Evo jedne male meditacije o tome može li se ributovati civilizacija tako da se dobije nešto slično onome što imamo ali bez korišćenja fosilnih goriva:


Out of the ashes

Borba za kontrolu snabdevanja energijom se prenela i na houmfront otkada je solarna energija postala bitan koncept:


Solar Power Battle Puts Hawaii at Forefront of Worldwide Changes

Quote
HONOLULU —  Allan Akamine has looked all around the winding, palm tree-lined cul-de-sacs of his suburban neighborhood in Mililani here on Oahu and, with an equal mix of frustration and bemusement, seen roof after roof bearing solar panels.
Mr. Akamine, 61, a manager for a cable company, has wanted nothing more than to lower his $600 to $700 monthly electric bill with a solar system of his own. But for 18 months or so, the state's biggest utility barred him and thousands of other customers from getting one, citing concerns that power generated by rooftop systems was overwhelming its ability to handle it.
Only under strict orders from state energy officials did the utility, the Hawaiian Electric Company, recently rush to approve the lengthy backlog of solar applications, including Mr. Akamine's.
It is the latest chapter in a closely watched battle that has put this state at the forefront of a global upheaval in the power business. Rooftop systems now sit atop roughly 12 percent of Hawaii's homes, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, by far the highest proportion in the nation.


"Hawaii is a postcard from the future," said Adam Browning, executive director of Vote Solar, a policy and advocacy group based in California.
Other states and countries, including California, Arizona, Japan and Germany, are struggling to adapt to the growing popularity of making electricity at home, which puts new pressures on old infrastructure like circuits and power lines and cuts into electric company revenue.
As a result, many utilities are trying desperately to stem the rise of solar, either by reducing incentives, adding steep fees or effectively pushing home solar companies out of the market. In response, those solar companies are fighting back through regulators, lawmakers and the courts.
The shift in the electric business is no less profound than those that upended the telecommunications and cable industries in recent decades. It is already remaking the relationship between power companies and the public while raising questions about how to pay for maintaining and operating the nation's grid.
The issue is not merely academic, electrical engineers say.
In solar-rich areas of California and Arizona, as well as in Hawaii, all that solar-generated electricity flowing out of houses and into a power grid designed to carry it in the other direction has caused unanticipated voltage fluctuations that can overload circuits, burn lines and lead to brownouts or blackouts.


"Hawaii's case is not isolated," said Massoud Amin, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Minnesota and chairman of the smart grid program at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a technical association. "When we push year-on-year 30 to 40 percent growth in this market, with the number of installations doubling, quickly — every two years or so — there's going to be problems."
The economic threat also has electric companies on edge. Over all, demand for electricity is softening while home solar is rapidly spreading across the country. There are now about 600,000 installed systems, and the number is expected to reach 3.3 million by 2020, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story  Continue reading the main story The Edison Electric Institute, the main utility trade group, has been warning its members of the economic perils of high levels of rooftop solar since at least 2012, and the companies are responding. In February, the Salt River Project, a large utility in Arizona, approved charges that could add about $50 to a typical monthly bill for new solar customers, while last year in Wisconsin, where rooftop solar is still relatively rare, regulators approved fees that would add $182 a year for the average solar customer.
In Hawaii, the current battle began in 2013, when Hawaiian Electric started barring installations of residential solar systems in certain areas. It was an abrupt move — a panicked one, critics say — made after the utility became alarmed by the technical and financial challenges of all those homes suddenly making their own electricity.
The utility wants to cut roughly in half the amount it pays customers for solar electricity they send back to the grid. But after a study showed that with some upgrades the system could handle much more solar than the company had assumed, the state's public utilities commission ordered the utility to begin installations or prove why it could not.
It was but one sign of the agency's growing impatience with what it considers the utility's failure to adapt its business model to the changing market.


Hawaiian Electric is scrambling to accede to that demand, approving thousands of applications in recent weeks. But it is under pressure on other fronts as well. NextEra Energy, based in Florida, is awaiting approval to buy it, while other islands it serves are exploring defecting to form their own cooperative power companies.
It is also upgrading its circuits and meters to better regulate the flow of electricity. Rooftop solar makes far more power than any other single source, said Colton Ching, vice president for energy delivery at Hawaiian Electric, but the utility can neither control nor predict the output.
"At every different moment, we have to make sure that the amount of power we generate is equal to the amount of energy being used, and if we don't keep that balance things go unstable," he said, pointing to the illuminated graphs and diagrams tracking energy production from wind and solar farms, as well as coal-fueled generators in the utility's main control room. But the rooftop systems are "essentially invisible to us," he said, "because they sit behind a customer's meter and we don't have a means to directly measure them."
For customers, such explanations offer little comfort as they continue to pay among the highest electric rates in the country and still face an uncertain solar future.
"I went through all this trouble to get my electric bill down, and I am still waiting," said Joyce Villegas, 88, who signed her contract for a system in August 2013 but was only recently approved and is waiting for the installation to be completed.
Mr. Akamine expressed resignation over the roughly $12,000 he could have saved, but wondered about the delay. "Why did it take forceful urging from the local public utility commission to open up more permits?" he asked.
Installers — who saw their fast-growing businesses slow to a trickle — are also frustrated with the pace. For those who can afford it, said James Whitcomb, chief executive of Haleakala Solar, which he started in 1977, the answer may lie in a more radical solution: Avoid the utility and its grid altogether.
Customers are increasingly asking about the batteries that he often puts in along with the solar panels, allowing them to store the power they generate during the day for use at night. It is more expensive, but it breaks consumer reliance on the utility's network of power lines.
"I've actually taken people right off the grid," he said, including a couple who got tired of waiting for Hawaiian Electric to approve their solar system and expressed no interest in returning to utility service. "The lumbering big utilities that are so used to taking three months to study this and then six months to do that — what they don't understand is that things are moving at the speed of business. Like with digital photography — this is inevitable."

Međutim, evo kako jeftin benzin lako utiče na izbor ličnog prevoza: gomila ljudi koji su prethodno posedovali hibrid ili električna kola, sada se vraća na SUV jer je gorivo nikad pristupačnije:


Hybrid and Electric Vehicles Struggle to Maintain Owner Loyalty, Reports Edmunds.com

Quote
SANTA MONICA, Calif.  — April 21, 2015 — Car buyers are trading in hybrid and electric cars for SUVs at a higher rate than ever before, according to a new analysis from car-buying platform Edmunds.com. The analysis offers a surprising look at how today's gas prices are drawing hybrid and EV owners toward gas-guzzling vehicles at a much more accelerated pace than in recent years.
According to Edmunds.com, about 22 percent of people who have traded in their hybrids and EVs in 2015 bought a new SUV. The number represents a sharp increase from 18.8 percent last year, and it is nearly double the rate of 11.9 percent just three years ago. Overall, only 45 percent of this year's hybrid and EV trade-ins have gone toward the purchase of another alternative fuel vehicle, down from just over 60 percent in 2012. Never before have loyalty rates for alt-fuel vehicles fallen below 50 percent.
"For better or worse, it looks like many hybrid and EV owners are driven more by financial motives rather than a responsibility to the environment," says Edmunds.com Director of Industry Analysis Jessica Caldwell. "Three years ago, when gas was at near-record highs, it was a lot easier to rationalize the price premiums on alternative fuel vehicles. But with today's gas prices as low as they are, the math just doesn't make a very compelling case."
To underscore the point, Edmunds calculates that at the peak average national gas price of $4.67/gallon in October 2012, it would take five years to break even on the $3,770 price difference between a Toyota Camry LE Hybrid ($28,230) and a Toyota Camry LE ($24,460). At today's national average gas price of $2.27/gallon, it would take twice as much time (10.5 years) to close the same gap.
Edmunds' analysis comes at a time when overall sales of alternative vehicles have continued to slide. EVs and hybrids accounted for just 2.7 percent of all new car sales in the first quarter of 2015, down from 3.3 percent during that same period last year. The share of SUVs, meanwhile, has increased from 31.8 percent in Q1 2014 to 34.2 percent in Q1 2015.

Toliko o američkoj svesti o klimatskim promenama.

Analiza kućnih Tesla baterija i njihovog potencijala da promene svet:


Tesla Battery Economics: On the Path to Disruption

Imati na umu:

The Balkans Are Giving Climate Change the Finger

Ona jadnica dobi veliki kašalj, a mi, kao i Kina, zagađujemo svet.

Da bude gore, Kina, da sebe manje zagadi, sad nama potura ugalj.

I ugalj kupujemo od Kine?

Hahah, ne, nego, kako tekst teoretiše:

Quote

All that makes the Balkans a microcosm of carbon geopolitics — sort of like a Cold War spy novel, only with coal plants standing in for missile silos. China sees the region as a possible entrée into Europe proper via what Winston Churchill once (wrongly) considered the continent's "soft underbelly." Europe, eager to wean itself off the Russian natural gas that produces roughly a third of its electricity, seems equally disinclined to break the region's anthracite addiction. And Russia is still keen to retain a foothold in its old stomping grounds. The Balkan nations themselves, still sapped by their long war in the 1990s and subsequent anemic growth, are playing a bad hand as best they can, scrambling for any foreign investment that will let them shovel as much coal as fast as possible.
In Serbia, China's Export-Import Bank recently dropped $608 million on a new 350-megawatt generator for the Kostolac power plant; in Bosnia, meanwhile, it's putting $833 million into a 450-megawatt unit at the Tuzla coal-fired plant. Not to be outdone, the China Development Bank provided $385 million for a Bosnian coal station. Chinese investors are funding similar construction in Montenegro and Romania. Ask the local rep for the Chinese Southeast European Business Association, Siniša Malus, why that is, and he'll tell you it's because European countries "prefer not to invest in coal." (Which is largely but not entirely true; two major European development banks are also plowing $175 million into Serbia's Kolubara coal mine.)

A simpler explanation might be that China, which is cutting back coal power to curb its own carbon emissions, is effectively exporting part of its coal industry to the Balkans. (Chinese construction firms and manufacturers are, unsurprisingly, deeply involved in these projects.) In the process it's forging business ties with Europe that could pay off down the road.

Mnogo mi je slatko što ovo nabrajanje uključuje Ukrajinu: "Across Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine (not technically part of the Balkans), Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro", i još usrdno dodaju kako tehnički Ukrajina nije na Balkanu, pa mice <3

Internet zaglupljuje. Svetski kapitalizam finansira debile da se bave razmišljanjem kako su svi osim njih u krivu, a da su oni u kravu. Evo, i mene već fata...

A sad još i ovo:
Earth heading for 'mini ice age' in just 15 years, scientists say

Quote

Solar scientists, armed with the best data yet regarding the activities of the sun, say the Earth is headed for a "mini ice age" in just 15 years -- something that hasn't happened for three centuries.
Professor Valentina Zharkova, of the University of Northumbria, presented the findings at the National Astronomy Meeting in Wales this week, Britain's Independent reported Saturday. 
Researchers, saying they understand solar cycles better than ever, predict that the sun's normal activity will decrease by 60 percent around 2030 -- triggering the "mini ice age" that could last for a decade. The last time the Earth was hit by such a lull in solar activity happened 300 years ago, during the Maunder Minimum, which lasted from 1645 to 1715.
Scientists say there are magnetic waves in the sun's interior that fluctuate between the body's northern and southern hemispheres, resulting in various solar conditions over a period of 10 to 12 years. Based on that data, researchers say they are now better able to anticipate the sun's activity -- which has led to the Zharkova team's prediction.
"Combining both [magnetic] waves together and comparing to real data for the current solar cycle, we found that our predictions showed an accuracy of 97 percent," Zharkova said.
If the "mini ice age" does indeed arrive, scientists say it will be accompanied by bitter cold winters -- frigid enough to cause rivers, like the Thames in London, to freeze over.                                       

Ček, bre, šta je sad ovo? Da kupujete bunde ili su vam dosta gaće? Šta o tome reče Milanković?