EC May 2015

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Wind and Solar Provide 100% of New Generating Capacity in April
by James Kotcon 26 May '15

26 May '15

?These data from the US Energy Information Agency show that, for the first four months of 2015, renewables provided 84 % of new capacity added to the grid, while gas added the remaining 16 %. Oil coal, and nukes had no added capacity so far this year. Renewables was 100 % f new capacity for the month of April. These data count utility scale generation, and do not include distributed generation such as residential roof-top solar. Full story at: http://ecowatch.com/2015/05/26/wind-solar-april-capacity/ Wind and Solar Provide 100% of New Generating Capacity in April According to the latest report from FERC's Office of Energy Projects, renewable energy accounted for all new generating capacity in April. Wind and solar accounted Read more...<http://ecowatch.com/2015/05/26/wind-solar-april-capacity/> Jim Kotcon

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US House Committee cuts $300 million from NASA budget for climate change research.
by William V. DePaulo, Esq. 26 May '15

26 May '15

May 6, 2015 The G.O.P.’s War on Science Gets Worse By Elizabeth Kolbert <http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elizabeth-kolbert> During last fall’s midterm election campaign, “I’m not a scientist” became a standard Republican answer to questions about climate change. The line seemed to invite parody, and Stephen Colbert (among others) obliged. He played clips of House Speaker John Boehner, then Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Florida Governor Rick Scott all offering, more or less word for word, the same refrain. “Everyone who denies climate change has the same stirring message,” Colbert observed <http://gawker.com/stephen-colbert-calls-out-im-not-a-scientist-climate-1656…>. “ ‘We don’t know what the fuck we’re talking about.’ ” The line worked—or, at least, didn’t *not *work—and Republicans won both houses of Congress. Now, it seems, they are trying to go one better. They are trying to prevent even scientists from being scientists. Last week, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, headed by Texas Republican Lamar Smith, approved a bill that would slash at least three hundred million dollars from NASA’s earth-science budget. “Earth science, of course, includes climate science,” Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat who is also on the committee, noted <http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/240549-congress-we-have-a-problem>. (Smith said <http://www.hq.nasa.gov/legislative/hearings/4-16-2015_SMITH_OPENING_STATEME…> that the White House’s NASA budget request favored the earth sciences “at the expense of the other science divisions and human and robotic space exploration.”) Johnson tried to get the cuts eliminated from the bill, but her proposed amendment was rejected. Defunding NASA’s earth-science program takes willed ignorance one giant leap further. It means that not only will climate studies be ignored; some potentially useful data won’t even be collected. The vote brought howls of protest from NASA itself and from wider earth-science circles. The agency’s administrator, Charles Bolden, issued a statement <http://www.wset.com/story/28947047/nasa-administrator-statement-on-house-au…> saying that the bill “guts our Earth science program and threatens to set back generations worth of progress in better understanding our changing climate.” In an opinion piece for the Washington* Post*, Marshall Shepherd, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Georgia and the former president of the American Meteorological Association, said that he could not sleep after hearing about the vote. “None of us has a ‘vacation planet’ we can go to for the weekend, so I argue that NASA’s mission to study planet Earth should be a ‘no-brainer,’ ” he wrote <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/05/01/cutt…> . The vote on the NASA bill came just a week after the same House committee approved major funding cuts to the National Science Foundation’s geosciences program, as well as cuts to Department of Energy programs that support research into new energy sources. As Michael Hiltzik <http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-gop-attack-on-climate-chan…>, a columnist for the Los Angeles *Times,* noted, the committee is “living down to our worst expectations.” The practical implications of the proposed cuts are certainly disturbing. (It’s going to be hard for D.O.E. to find new energy sources if it isn’t even looking for them.) But perhaps even more distressing is the mindset that led to them. The “I’m not a scientist” line is basically a declaration of willed ignorance. You might think people entrusted by voters to craft public policy would be embarrassed to acknowledge, to paraphrase Colbert, that they have no idea what they’re talking about, and don’t want to. “Well, I’m not a scientist, either. But you know what? I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and at N.O.A.A., and at our major universities,” President Barack Obama put it a few few months ago, in his State of the Union address <https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/20/remarks-president-st…>, referring to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “And the best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate.” Cutting NASA and the N.S.F.’s climate-science budgets isn’t going to alter the basic realities of climate change. No one needs an advanced degree to understand this. Indeed, the idea that ignoring a problem isn’t going to make it go away is one that kids should grasp by the time they’re six or seven. But ignoring a problem does often make it more difficult to solve. And that, you have to assume, in a perverse way, is the goal here. What we don’t know, we can’t act on. “It’s hard to believe that in order to serve an ideological agenda, the majority is willing to slash the science that helps us have a better understanding of our home planet,” Representative Johnson wrote. Hard to believe, but, unfortunately, true. ---------------------------------------- Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer at *The New Yorker* since 1999.

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Coal mines closing
by James Kotcon 23 May '15

23 May '15

Murray Energy and Alpha announce over 1600 mining job layoffs in West Virginia. The story highlights the blaming: "Murray Energy cited "the vastly increased use of natural gas in the Ohio Valley to generate electricity," the "ongoing destruction of the United States coal industry by President Barack Obama," and - for the West Virginia workforce cuts - the state's "excessive coal severance tax." But Murray's move comes two months after he invested $1.4 billion to buy Illinois coal reserves. So while he is investing in the competition, he blames Obama and WV's excessive coal severance taxes. The WV Legislature (under new Republican leadership) is currently reviewing our tax structure, and many legislators seem likely to buy into Murray's blaming of Obama and severance taxes, without considering Murray's efforts to shift resources from West Virginia to Illinois. I think we need to highlight this in a response as soon as possible. The two major issues that the Legislature is studying are taxes and roads. A recent roads report suggested several ways to raise money for road repairs, but does not appear to address overweight trucks, or fuel taxes. I think an OP/ED connecting the two issues with the Murray efforts to drain ever more resources from our states to competitors might be well received. Whaddya Tink? Full story is at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150522/GZ01/150529712 Jim Kotcon

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Court says records about WVU mining health research protected
by James Kotcon 23 May '15

23 May '15

Another important news story. See full story at link below. JBK West Virginia does not have an "academic freedom" exemption to its public records law, but certain documents about a former university researcher's examination of mountaintop removal mining's impacts on public health are protected from disclosure as "internal memoranda," the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a case brought by Alpha Natural Resources<http://www.courtswv.gov/supreme-court/docs/spring2015/14-0370.pdf>. Justices concluded that "the involuntary public disclosure" of former WVU researcher Michael Hendryx's "research documents" would "expose the decision-making process in such a way as to hinder candid discussion" by university faculty and "undermine WVU's ability to perform its operations." Alpha lawyers had sued to try to force WVU to release thousands of documents<http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150304/GZ01/150309626> related to a series of papers by Hendryx<http://ohvec.org/issues/mountaintop_removal/articles/health/> that linked mountaintop removal coal mining to increased risk of birth defects, cancer, and a variety of other illnesses among coalfield residents. Among other things, Alpha wanted copies of correspondence between Hendryx, various co-authors, and any outside organizations, such as environmental groups or scientists who peer-reviewed the Hendryx papers. - See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150521/GZ01/150529798/1419#sthash.rhBnFR…

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Greenhouse gas emissions in China
by James Kotcon 15 May '15

15 May '15

?I found this to be very interesting. JBK http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/15/3659355/china-coal-use-drops/ [http://d35brb9zkkbdsd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/shutterstoc…]<http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/15/3659355/china-coal-use-drops/> It Only Took Four Months For China To Achieve A Jaw-Dropping Reduction In Carbon Emissions | ThinkProgress When China's greenhouse gas emissions fall, they fall hard. Read more...<http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/15/3659355/china-coal-use-drops/>

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EC May 2015