Europe to Receive Saharan Solar Power By 2015?

It looks increasingly likely that they will be able to, according to this Guardian article.  Plans to install renewable energy infrastructure across Europe and Northern Africa continue to mature.  By 2050, the plan is to have 15% of Europe’s power being delivered across the Mediterranean Sea.

Meanwhile, the Cons and ConservaDems in the U.S. continue to lavish billions of dollars in tax breaks on dirty energy corporations and are fighting legislation to make renewables be more competitive, reduce harm on the climate and improve national security.  What patriots they are.  Europe is going to continue to dominate more of the renewable energy industry than the U.S. in the 21st century.

[h/t Climate Progress]

Sen. Inhofe’s Energy/Climate Bill Boycott Fails [Update X2]

On Halloween, I wrote a post detailing Sen. Inhofe’s (R-Denier) attempt to stop the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee from doing their jobs and voting on a piece of legislation.  Why boycott the energy and climate legislation committee markup?  Because then it may not get out of that committee, dying before an up-or-down vote could be made in the whole Senate.  That up-or-down concept received a lot of attention when the Cons were in charge and Democrats were trying to debate the Cons’ bills and offer amendments.  Now?  Not so much.  Hypocrites.

In response to Sen. Inhofe’s childish tantrum to not play with others, Sen. Boxer laid out a potential work-around: using an interpretation of the rules to move the bill out of committee without having any minority party members present.  The committee met today to vote on the bill.  Sen. Inhofe and his car of clowns didn’t bother to show up.  Sen. Boxer had the committee vote – and they passed the bill out.

Sen. Inhofe, predictably, ran to the press, crying that things were so unfair and Sen. Boxer was a big meanie who didn’t want to listen to them.

Who the frack cares?  Seriously.  The Cons made the decision to not participate.  They know what’s at stake, which is why they’re trying to prevent any reasonable consideration of energy and climate legislation.  They have dirty energy corporations to appease with their votes.  As to Inhofe’s complaint that how often the procedure has been used?  More nonsense.  Either come to the table with an intent to do some work or shut the hell up.

This leads to 2 conclusions.  1: Do your damn job, Cons!  2: More of this, please.  If the Cons don’t want to participate in good faith, Dems shouldn’t let that hold them back from moving bills through Congress.

[Update 11/6/09]: Oh, Max Baucus (Bought-ND) was the only person to vote against the bill.  10-1 was the final number and all of them were Democrats.  I don’t care that the bill passed as it relates to Baucus.  He tried to destroy the health care bill and voted against this bill.  I’m supporting whoever his next opponent is – in a potential primary but for sure the general election.  Votes have consequences, Max.  You’re done.

[Update 2 11/8/09]: The more you read, the more you know.  It turns out that the Cons wanted the EPA to redo a lengthy analysis on the legislation, something the EPA justifiably rejected on the grounds that the differences between a new analysis and an analysis already done would be undetectable by their models.  Further, I read this at Climate Progress:

Since 2001, the Senate has debated at least eight energy or global warming bills where there was no analysis by EPA, Congressional Budget Office or the Energy Information Administration completed in advance of Committee deliberations.

Isn’t that interesting?  Senate Cons have no valid reason to demand another analysis be done, not when they didn’t allow, request or demand such studies be performed during their mishandling of the Senate in the recent past.

Sen. Inhofe (R-Denier) Plans Boycott of Senate Committee Vote on Energy/Climate Bill

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said Thursday that she is planning to hold a markup Tuesday on S. 1733 (pdf), the Senate version of the Energy and Climate legislation President Obama and a majority of Americans are searching for.  In usual fashion, the Cons in the Senate are trying to figure out ways they can continue to stall movement of the bill.  In much the same way that they convinced all-too-willing Democrats to push health care legislation further and further back on the legislative calendar, climate legislation has been bottled up in committee for months now.  If Sen. Inhofe (R-Denier) and his Con colleagues get their way, the energy and climate legislation will either never move out of committee or will be so terribly weakened that there might as well not be any legislation at all.

Sen. Inhofe and six other Cons on the Environment and Public Works Committee are planning a boycott of the markup come Tuesday, which would mean Sen. Boxer couldn’t hold a vote to move it out of committee.  She unfortunately needs 2 Cons to show up to move the legislation further along.  Those same Cons are more interested in trying to show how ineffectual government can possibly be by slowing everything down to no movement (thereby fulfilling their own sick predictions), especially when it comes to energy and climate legislation.  By doing so, they prove they are pleased with recent news that China and other nations are taking over industries the U.S. invented in the 20th century, industries that will determine which country dominates the 21st century.  Enslaved to their failed ideologies, the Cons work tirelessly to ensure it is not the U.S. that continues dominance in these fields and in 21st century geopolitics.

Despite ever-growing proof that our climate forcing is causing changes in Earth’s climate much faster than recently thought; despite ever-growing proof that switching our economy to more efficient and renewable-energy-driven technologies will save us billions every year (costing no jobs, wrecking no economies) and stop our climate forcing, the Cons cannot break away from their dirty energy corporate benefactors and do something positive for this country and the planet.

Instead, the Cons are whining about how Boxer runs her Committee meetings, planning senseless obstructionist tactics and demanding that the EPA undertake study after study after study, none of which will ever get one single Con to vote for the bill anyway.

Sen. Boxer opened the door to alternative approaches for moving the bill, including the use of Senate Rule 14 that allows the majority to discharge legislation out of a committee and bring it directly to the floor.  I hope she does it.  When Cons were trying to force their extremist political nominees and destructive legislation down Americans’ throats, they couldn’t talk enough about “Up or down votes” and how Democrats were holding them up.  Why won’t Cons support “Up or down votes” now?  Because their fringe party is now in the minority.  They’re truly being obstructionists, needlessly so on every issue.  Sen. Boxer and the Democrats should do whatever they can to push the people’s business forward – rolling over the Cons if need be.

Colorado’s Share of President Obama’s Smart Grid Investments

Did you hear all the talk about President Obama’s announcement that $3.4 Billion in energy grid modernization investment? It hasn’t exactly dominated the top-of-the-hour news reports, but made some small ripples on Tuesday.

While Congress remains bogged down on health care, to say nothing of energy and climate, legislation, the executive branch has been very busy this year starting initiatives and issuing new rules and threatening regulations. This is the latest in that series of actions.

Two projects in Colorado are receiving investment money. More on them below…

Electric Car Developments in France

There’s some good news for a country that is being much more proactive about energy use and climate change than the U.S.  A nationwide electric car recharging network is going to be built in France.  An energy utility and a car maker are leading the way on the project, set to debut in just two short years.

The project will receive €400m of state backing over the next four years, which has been personally guaranteed by President Sarkozy.

To be worked out is who will be responsible for the charging station infrastructure, which is nothing to sneeze at.

The early front-runner is California-based Project Better Place, which has confirmed it is in talks about the project. The company is already building electric car recharging networks in Denmark and Israel, based on a model that sees cars quickly swap empty batteries for fully charged ones at roadside stations.

I’ve been a fan of Better Place ever since I heard about them, about a year ago now.  I checked their plans out, which seem relatively well-developed for a new company.  They have been very aggressive about putting themselves at the fore of the electric car wave that is slowly (for now) building momentum.  The article actually skips over a number of cities that are also in contact with Better Place – including a couple in the U.S. that are planning on building out electric car charging stations.  It’s just unfortunate that it’s only a small handful of mayors and governors in America that recognize what the dominant form of transportation will soon be.  It makes sense that a national approach, such as Israel’s, Denmark’s and now France’s, should be pursued.

Interestingly, after fighting higher mileage standards quite vociferously for years in the U.S., Chrysler is among the competitors trying to get a foothold in the France electric car market.  But they can’t build their U.S. fleet to meet higher efficiency standards, they told Congress.  Nobody would buy the cars.  Uh-huh.  Their European fleet meets Europe’s standards, which are much more aggressive than the U.S.’.  After stupidly fighting a U.S. mandate, I wasn’t sorry to see their survival in question last year into this year.  They’ve done what they could to destroy the U.S. middle class.  They found out how untenable that approach was.  Hey, Chrysler, how about doing some fighting for this technology state-side?

Check out Better Place’s ongoing marketing approach.

Colorado Could Be 9.3°F Warmer By 2100

An unbelievably ironic situation could evolve over the Midwestern U.S. during the rest of this century. The states whose Senators are most adamant about derailing any meaningful action on climate change are most likely to experience the worst effects of that climate change.

How will Colorado’s Senators vote when (if?) a climate change/energy bill comes to the Senate floor. To be clear, there is no such bill currently in the Senate today. Unfortunately, all we can conjecture about are generalities at this point. That being said, this general question should be posed to our Senators (even better would be to get a reasonable response): Will you vote for a climate bill that avoids most of the 9.3°F of warming that Colorado can expect to see by 2100?

It would be best, of course, to see a climate bill that would actually do so. The House’s climate and energy bill, H.R. 2454 doesn’t do enough in my opinion, for example. It would lock in some portion of that predicted warming. At this stage, it is up to the Senate to produce a bolder climate bill.

Atlantic Tropical Weather Update 8/27/09

The fourth named storm of the 2009 Atlantic Hurricane Season has formed – Tropical Storm Danny was a tropical wave that had made it north of the Caribbean Islands and interacted with an upper-level low.  Enough organization occurred to allow the storm to be named.  Here are Tropical Storm Danny’s vitals as of this morning:

Center located at 27.4N, 72.1W; moving NW @ 10mph; maximum sustained winds of 60mph; minimum central pressure of 1006mb.

Tropical Storm Danny’s official track forecast is a near duplicate of Hurricane Bill’s.  He is moving around the western periphery of the sub-tropical ridge over the mid-Atlantic.  His course should take him by the east coast of the U.S., but no landfall should occur there.  Instead, T.S. Danny is expected to come ashore either over New Brunswick or Nova Scotia.  It will be a couple of more days before that final landfall area becomes more clear.

Tropical Storm Danny’s official intensity forecast intensifies him to a hurricane by Saturday morning.  He should maintain that strength through the weekend, affecting the Canadian maritimes as a Category 1 storm.

Elsewhere, Invest 94 emerged over the Atlantic early yesterday.  It is moving west across the Atlantic basin.  It is currently south-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands.  It consists mostly of disorganized thunderstorms at this time, though this might change in the next couple of days.  This system might stay to the south of where Hurricane Bill and Tropical Storm Danny moved.  If that happens, it would pass over the Windward Islands in six days.

Sen. Udall Reportedly Joins McCain On Nuclear Power

So says the Denver Post after Sen. John McCain joined Sen. Mark Udall on a tour of Rocky Mountain National Park to see firsthand some of the deleterious effects climate change has already wrought. The takeaway? “Bipartisan” support for nuclear power.

Really? Really, Sen. Udall – that’s what you’re going to work towards in the Senate? And again, we see a Democratic Senator pledge to work with their Republican colleague toward a policy solution when it is quite apparent what McCain really wants [emphasis mine]:

President Barack Obama must put forth a White House plan as soon as possible that congressional leaders can debate, McCain said.

Is this a continuation of the Cons’ view that executives make laws? Because if they do, then President Obama doesn’t need the Congress for anything. No, McCain and his Con buddies just want to continue to use President Obama as a smear target. Sen. Udall – you cannot work with these people until they demonstrate they want to work with you. And no, sliming Democrats at every opportunity and trashing the deliberative process in your chamber doesn’t count as working with you, in case you were curious or confused.

Pickens Finally Pushes His Real Plan

T. Boone Pickens, the multi-billionaire oilman who helped fund horribly immoral ads against Democratic candidates came out with the Pickens Plan last year.  After looking it over, it was easy to see he was using his wind energy plan as a front for an alternative goal.  After looking into it a little further, it became obvious that Pickens only wanted to look ‘green’ so that he could control a larger portion of the natural gas market, then sell that natural gas as part of a transportation sector makeover, so that he could make billions more.  Which he’s free to do, of course, in our messed up semi-market-based economy.  I wrote three posts on Pickens before feeling comfortable that he wasn’t likely to succeed in his ridiculous plan any time soon -

Bad Energy Plan & Hypocritical Representatives

Pope, Podesta and Pickens: Energy Policies and Climate Change

T. Boone’s Millions and the Corporate Media

Chevy Volt Media Blitz

I heard quite a bit about the Chevy Volt in all forms of media yesterday.  The more I heard, the more I realized that commentators and pundits that I consider trustworthy were, in this case, doing a lot of heavy lifting for Chevy in the form of free marketing.  I think the Volt will be a good vehicle and an interesting case in how the automotive sector might be shifting.  That said, there were a number of claims that I thought needed to be cleaned up.

Let’s start with this NYT article.  In the lede: GM puts Volt’s Mileage in triple digits.  Well, that’s nice.  GM also told Americans two years ago that the truck and SUV markets in the U.S. would keep them on top of the automotive world.  How did that turn out exactly?  What is the official source of mpg ratings?  The E.P.A. – and they haven’t assessed the Volt’s performance yet, mostly because the methodology to do so remains in draft form.  But GM is doing what GM should be doing: trying their hardest to build up expectations for the vehicle.

What are those expectations?  230 mpg in city driving.  Wowsa!  Doesn’t that sound awesome?  Actually, it should be 230mpg* in city driving – and that asterisk should be pretty darned big!  Drivers might get 230mpg if they drive less than 40 miles from charging station to charging station in laboratory-like conditions: no hills, no A/C or heat, etc.!  More likely, drivers in every-day conditions could see ~100mpg performance.  Now, that’s nothing to sneeze at.  I think it’s a very good half-step forward.  But here’s the thing: there are 100mpg cars available today.  Modify a factory car today with $10K or so, and 100mpg is already well within reach.  So where is the dramatic technological leap forward?

Nissan has countered that it’s upcoming hybrid, the Leaf, could get up to 367mpg.  The same limitations I described for the Volt apply here, also.  Nissan is also working with Better Place to manufacture and deploy all-electric vehicles, which wouldn’t need any gas whatsoever to drive!  Now that’s what I call progress!