President Obama, finally, took a get-involved get-tough approach to negotiations on health care legislation and the arms control treaty with Russia -- with success. Could this be the turn-around for what might still be a great presidency?
The predominant moral issue of the 21st century, almost surely, will be climate change, comparable to Nazism faced by Churchill in the 20th century and slavery faced by Lincoln in the 19th century. Our fossil fuel addiction, if unabated, threatens our children and grandchildren, and most species on the planet.
Yet the president, addressing climate in the State of the Union, was at his good-guy worst, leading with "I know that there are those who disagree..." with the scientific evidence. This weak entrée, almost legitimizing denialists, was predictably greeted by cheers and hoots from well-oiled coal-fired Congressmen. The president was embarrassed and his supporters cringed.
This is not the 17th century, when "beliefs" trumped science, forcing Galileo to recant his understanding of the solar system. The president should unequivocally support the climate science community, which is under politically orchestrated assault on the legitimacy of its scientific assessments. If he needs reassurance or cover, the president can ask for a prompt report from the National Academy of Sciences, established by Abraham Lincoln for advice on technical issues.
Why face the difficult truth presented by the climate science? Why not use the president's tack: just talk about the need for clean energy and energy independence? Because that approach leads to wrong policies, ineffectual legislation larded with giveaways to special interests, such as the Waxman-Markey bill in the House and the bills being considered now in the Senate.
The fundamental requirement for solving our fossil fuel addiction and moving to a clean energy future is a rising price on carbon emissions. Otherwise, if we refuse to make fossil fuels pay for their damage to human health, the environment, and our children's future, fossil fuels will remain the cheapest energy and we will squeeze every drop from tar sands, oil shale, pristine lands, and offshore areas.
An essential corollary to the rising carbon price is 100 percent redistribution of collected fees to the public -- otherwise the public will never allow the fee to be high enough to affect lifestyles and energy choices. The fee must be collected from fossil fuel companies across-the-board at the mine, wellhead, or port of entry. Revenues should be divided equally among all legal adult residents, with half-shares for children up to two per family, distributed monthly as a "green check". Part of the revenue could be used to reduce taxes, provided the tax reduction is transparent and verifiable.
The rising carbon price will affect almost everything. People's purchases will reflect a desire to minimize their costs. Food from nearby farms will benefit; imports from halfway around the world will decline. Renewable energies, other carbon-free energies, and energy efficiency will grow; fossil fuels will decline.
The fee-and-green-check approach is transparent, fair and effective. Congressman John Larson defined an appropriate rising fee. $15 per ton of carbon dioxide the first year and $10 more per ton each year. Economic modeling shows that carbon emissions would decline 30 percent by 2020. The annual dividend then would be $2000-3000 per legal adult resident, $6000-9000 per family with two or more children.
About sixty percent of the public would receive more in the green check than they pay in added energy costs. People will set their net cost or gain via their energy and other consumer choices. Dividends could be adjusted state-by-state to prevent transfer of wealth from one part of the country to another.
Religions across the spectrum -- Catholics, Jews, Mainline Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Evangelicals -- are united in seeing climate change as a moral and ethical challenge. The Religious Coalition on Creation Care is working with the Citizen's Climate Lobby, the Price Carbon Campaign, and economists at the Carbon Tax Center to help promote this honest and effective energy and climate policy. The public, if well-informed, can be expected to support this policy.
But so far Congress has been steamrolled by special interests. Congressional leaders add giveaways in their bills to attract industry support and specific votes. The best of the lot, the Cantwell-Collins bill, returns 75 percent of the revenue to the public. But it is still a cap-and-trade scheme, and its low carbon price and offset-type projects create little incentive for clean energy and would have only small impact on carbon emissions.
Can the cacophony of special interests be overcome? There is one way: the president must get involved. He must explain the situation to the public and use his bully pulpit to persuade Congress to do what is right for the nation and future generations.
He must explain that a rising carbon price is needed to phase out our fossil fuel addiction. The dividend will provide the public the means to move to a clean energy future, stimulating the economy.
Carbon fee and dividend is the base policy needed to move the nation forward to a clean energy future. It must be supplemented by other actions including building and efficiency standards, and public investment in improved infrastructure and technology development.
Congress has a role to play toward these ends, but it is the rising carbon price that will make them feasible. Investment decisions are best left to the private sector. The government can provide loan guarantees for nuclear power and support development of trial carbon capture storage, but these energies must compete with energy efficiency and renewable energies in a free market.
The best part about a simple honest rising carbon price is that it provides the only realistic chance for an international climate accord. President Obama was right to abandon the 192-nation debate. The need is for an agreement between the two dominant emitters: the United States and China.
China will never agree to the "cap" approach that Congress favors. Developing nations will not cap their economies. But China is willing to negotiate a carbon price. How can I say that with confidence?
China is making enormous investments in nuclear power, wind power, and solar power. They want to avoid the fossil fuel addiction of the United States. They want to clean up their atmosphere and water. They want to protect the several hundred million Chinese living near sea level. They know that their clean fuels will win out only if fossil fuels are made to pay for damages that they cause.
Once the United States and China agree on a carbon price, most other nations will accept the same. Products made by nations that do not have a carbon price can be charged an equivalent duty under existing rules of the World Trade Organization. That will convince most nations to join, so they can collect the tax themselves.
Perhaps posterity may remember that Obama reduced the number of nuclear-tipped missiles, or that he added ten percent of Americans to the health care rolls. But if he dreams of being a great president, he needs to take on the great moral challenge of our century.
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I launched my first carbon neutral cradle to grave product this week. It's a gel I'll not give details.
My factory already used solar power bought at a premium so it's just the propane used to boil the process to sanitise it and the transport fuels' CO2 as the main CO2 I have to off set. Since I've read James Hansen's "Storms of my Grandchildren" I agree that it's not OK to use trees to offset. If I want to off set fossil fuel use I must put carbon in the ground.
So I use bio char. A 200 lt drum of wood chips with a lid that points into the propane that heats it is under the water tank that sanitises the process water for the gel. Pyrolisis gives off heat! For every tonne (1000 kg, I'm in Australia we use kg) I boil I make 200 kg of bio char and that is enough to make the supply chain carbon neutral.
Whats more the garden waste I use gets dropped off in my car park for free as in my district the mixed garden waste cost to dump.
All in all it adds about 1% to the cost!
It is a travesty that a large portion of the US is the recipient of free energy from the sun yet refuses to utilize it. The government should mandate solar for all new construction in the sunbelt states. As much as many of us hate government mandates, quit complaining, you probably pissed and moaned when the gubment imposed auto safety standards, but sure were glad when those seat belts and air bags saved your life.
It is probably inevitable that some kind of carbon offset tax or tariff will soon become law. Utilities in the sunbelt states should be allowed (required?) to offset their carbon by making solar systems available at no cost to homeowners.
Imagine what it would do to the economy of the Southwest alone if the government and power companies started a 10-20 year program to equip every home with solar. Individuals benefit because their cost of living is lower. Power companies benefit because they can stop building new power plants and eventually shut down many existing ones, to be replaced with a clean, reliable, low-cost source of energy. The planet benefits from less pollution.
Jeez, we'd probably even see a lot of people getting rich off of actually making something, instead of gambling with taxpayer money.
Translation:
"We won't be able to afford most of the things in the future."
Consumption is 70% of our economy. The economy of the future under cap-and-trade or a Hansen carbon tax is most likely going to much smaller than today. Liberal 'experts' such as John Kenneth Galbraith saw consumption as bad, I'm not surprised that AGW is going to reduce most of our 'unnecessary' consumption.
I guess we shouldn't worry about unemployment though, Democrats will make sure every windmill has 5 unionized workers running them and there'll be lots of solar stations to provide jobs for the 20 million unemployed and those 12+ million illegals (and possibly their extended family members) who are going to get amnesty. Even better, we'll still be sending millions of jobs overseas to help meet the UN's MDGs meaning even more blazing economic growth for America. And if these things don't get our economy humming, we can count on a climate treaty where we end up paying hundreds of billions of dollars per year for decades as well as transfer most of our technology and technological know-how to developing countries so they can use that funding to build infrastructure to support manufacturing and then take more of our jobs so they can build things to sell to us.... It's all going to be great under the democratic economy of the future!
got a problem with that?
2) Re: foreign wind turbines: investigat
says 79% of the 2009 stimulus funds for wind energy went to foreign companies. NOT GOOD!
BUT the following site: solveclima
claims an uptrend favoring U.S. components, as local expertise and production ramp up.
Meanwhile, current wind projects under construction on U.S. soil show mostly the usual suspects:
GE (10 projects, 764MW, German/US ),
Siemens (6 projects, 483MW, Denmark/Germany ),
Suzlon (3 projects, 351MW, India ),
Gamesa (1 project - 300MW, Spain ),
Mitsubishi (2 projects, 265MW, Japan ),
Acciona (1 project, 99MW, Spain )
Vestas (2 projects, 71MW, Denmark ),
RE Power (2 projects, 68MW, Germany ),
Northern Power (1 project, 2.2 MW, US ),
BUT they yield a crude and telling look, suggesting that GE has now clearly retaken the lead; Vestas is fading; while Suzlon is coming on pretty strong.
This is from p. 16 of the 4th Qt. 2009 Amer. Wind Energy Assoc. report :
awea.org/p
With the world's largest GDP, why's the U.S. dead last in trade - $700 billion deficit? Services are harder to export than goods, but that gap's enormity also reflects how the world values our output. Americans buy massages and peddle financial paper, but don't make 'things' anymore. Isn't that what 70% consumption really says?
But are goods and services really equivalent, dollar for dollar?
Instead, let's suppose true GDP is nominal GDP, minus trade deficit and growing national public/private debt. Nominal GDP is ~$14 Trillion. Public debt grew in 2008 by ~$1.8Trill
Isn't that more realistic? If not, how come we owe Japan and China so much money?
But what happens to productivity as real income falls via debt-induced inflation, so consumer spending shrinks? We start making more goods. But that means true productivity rises, decreasing our trade deficit, restoring our greatness.
So, I think your fear is real - you'll need to become more productive.
There is a problem with the way people are pricing rooftop pv solar.
I claim rooftop pv solar is available for as little as 2$ per Wp installed. about 3 cents per kwh
So people provide links to solarbzz, that say solar costs 8$/Wp and 30 cents per kwh.
Let me explain the discrepancies: Buzz is using Average, I am using best. To me this is more appropriate, it's like listing the prices for stereos, I don't care what the average price is. Most people care about the lowest price. Right?
That accounts for a factor of 4, since Buzz uses an average 4$ per Wp panels. Panels are available retail for 1$ per Wp, new 25 year guaranteed. that brings the cost down to
7.5 cents.
http://www
They assume 15 years, I assume 30 which is how long everybody agree the panels are more than likely to last.
now we are are at 3.75 cents.
Close enough?
Do you have trouble believing the installation price will fall with the modules costs?
http://eet
1$ panels, 2$ installed.
http://www
But to set a proper baseline, maybe you could tell us what's the cheapest price available NOW, not just for panels or kits, but for full, residential (~5kW) PV SYSTEMS installed?
http://eet
It's all on my profile, that's working now, right?
http://eet
Page 16, list the installed cost from 2$ to 20$.
Notice that
35% of the system cost 7-8$
15% cost 6-7$
5% cost 5-6$
2% cost 4-5$
about 1% cost 3-4$
about .5% cost 2-3$
and 62 system were not included because they cost less than 2$
but they had plenty of systems between 2-3$, there is no reason to cut it off below 2$.
Panels are available new for about 1$, and the normal installed rule of thumb is twice the panels costs.
The cheap panel prices are not an anomaly, they are the expected and announced prices from the major panel manufacturers.
Page 16, list the installed cost from 2$ to 20$.
Notice that
35% of the system cost 7-8$
15% cost 6-7$
5% cost 5-6$
2% cost 4-5$
about 1% cost 3-4$
about .5% cost 2-3$
and 62 system were not included because they cost less than 2$
rooftop pv solar is no a commodity, you have to shop around, and check for the best deals, including various utility state and gov breaks and programs.
I can't tell you where to find the best deal on a stereo either.
One might advance reasonable future costs for monocrystalline silicon and from that to S-curve market penetration rates. But stepping up the hi-tech ladder to polycrystalline, thin-film, amorphous, polymer organic, luminescent concentrating, dye-paint concentrators for windows, or nanoantennae technology, these seem less and less credible. Since the last sports theoretical efficiencies ~80%, can generate current from photons in the IR, and be printed by roll to roll methods, geographical bounding within the sun belt may not pose the usual limitations. Or any of these could stall over some undetermined cost/tech bottleneck.
Then, there's the hammer and forceps posed by government subsidies that wax and wane with party politics. E.g., conservatives in Denmark, wind capital of the world, stalled wind energy in the early 2000s for ~3 years, before they toppled. Subsidies can even work in reverse. In 2004 sudden subsidy-driven demand in Germany raised the price of pure silicon, thus conventional photovoltaic systems.
Moreover, if Big Oil feels threatened, they know well how to buy and shelve or stall the development of potentially competitive technologies - witness Arco Solar/BP Solar. They can easily afford to buy out angels and venture capitalists discretely before any IPO occurs, or even orchestrate a hostile takeover after a small company goes public.
So, who knows?
In the meantime I think we have to keep in mind all options: Hydro, geo, wind, nuclear(not just to annoy reseach, but that is a positive side affect as well =) and solar to name a few. Unfortunately current US energy production is ~60% coal/gas, the priority should be to reduce this in favor of cleaner options.
In fact, through a combo of nukes, efficiency, and same socialistic energy policy, Sweden dropped their CO2 emissions 14% from 1990 Kyoto Accord levels, while GROWING GDP by 40%. So, don't say it can't be done.
Meanwhile, Hansen, at an age when most scientists collect a pension and the typical denier swills two after golfing, still does good science AND campaigns as hard as ever for what he's believed since the late 1970's, and takes a lot of guff doing it. In fact, here's a whole book on political attacks on Hansen:
http://boo
The radiative transfer/climate guys at Goddard and NASA Ames helped save our rears multiple times, not just global warming, but also nuclear winter/autumn studies initiated by the TTAPS model (final author - Carl Sagan), and stratospheric ozone depletion - Concorde SST got canned due to skin cancer increases.
BTW, Hansen is overtly promotes 4th generation Integral Fast Reactors (IFRs) and liquid flouride thorium reactors (LFTRs) as partial solutions to the looming energy crisis.
Here's his 8 page letter to Barack Obama.
http://www
E.g., decreasing beef consumption by 2/3rds is equivalent to driving 1/3rd fewer miles.
Indeed, birth and immigration control, conservation, and increased energy efficiency should be undertaken first, as they are the cheapest, easiest, fastest steps in phasing out fossil fuels. I.e., the warmer it gets, the faster it'll warm - positive feedbacks are accelerating global warming. So, a buck spent today on conservation has far more impact than $10 spent on high-tech power 20 years from now.
Indeed, economic reviews suggest that about 2% of GDP would suffice to mitigate global warming.
Yet, we now spend 18% of income on health care - about double what Euros spend, toss another $150B per year down Iraq and Afghanistan, while refusing to phase out fossil fuel use - for which we benefit HOW exactly? Cheap gasoline? Security from petrodolla
According to U.N. and CIA stats,
http://en.
Japan ranks 1st among nations in life expectancy. Canadians can expect to live ~2.5 years longer on average than Americans. Cubans, Costa Ricans, and Greek Cypriots, provide more universal socialized medicine than the U.S. and can all expect to outlive us.
We just got our jobs, home equities and 401(k)s hosed by Wall St. scammers. And we toss another $150 billion a year down the toilet in Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting petrodollar-funded terrorists.
But do we opt to get off fossil fuels? NO. In response we rationalize that getting ripped off BIG TIME again by our unsubtle oligarchy means that we can no longer afford to do anything about health care costs, let alone "global warming". Not that we wanted to anyway, since we regard global warming as mostly a negative externality that someone else will have to deal with, i.e., our own children.
In fact, any attempt at a carbon tax, "cap and trade", "cap and dividend" is labeled "wealth re-distribution". HAH! What happened in 2008-2009 was BIG-TIME wealth distribution on scale we don't even want to acknowledge. Talk about denial!
Meanwhile, for the bloated 18% of disposable income we spend on health care, the U.S. remains somewhere between 28th and 38th in life expectancy, depending on whether you find the CIA or U.N. stats more credible. And so we can expect to live about two years longer than Mexicans, or 3 years less than the Japanese. By the way, Mexico opted for socialized medicine ~4 years ago.
The Co2 level in the atmosphere as recorded by the NOAA on Muana Loa in HI now stands at 391 PPM (parts per million) The level that would mean a stabilization of the climate is 350PP- within 5 years years we will have reached 400ppm.
It seems we have passed the 'tipping point' and are now in uncharted territory.
The last time the planets Co2 level was this high- we saw sea levels significantly higher then today- and Greenland was ice free-- the next 10 years should see planetary change at a level people will have difficulty adapting to.
Nuclear power is the only energy source that can actually lead to nuclear war and destroy all human life.
So the nuke folks call their new fantasy reactors L.I.F.E.
see? can't you just feel the desperate attempt to cover up nuclear power's apocalyptic nature.
"It 's not apocalyptic, it's L.I.F.E!"
Nuclear power generates a million times at least as much deadly waste as any other power source, in terms of people it can kill and cancers it will cause.
So the Nuke liars call it C.L.E.A.N.
actually, nuke liars just lie and call it clean!
The nukes power industry grow out of the bomb industry. That's why the Uranium once through cycle was adopted: it makes the best bomb material.
Nuke power industry has inherited all of the bad habits of the nuclear bomb projects: secrecy, deception, disregard for the safety of civilians, and a war desperation mentality that will risk the Apocalypse to keep their program running.
Solar wind and bio fuels are already available cheaper than all fossil but dirty coal.
1% is a hugely significant value!
Green energy has been doubling every year for awhile now.
Green energy at 1% now needs to double for only 7 more years, to completely replace all other energy sources.
that's why the fossil and nukes industries attack it.
http://www
look up the "S" curve.
steve41: "Doubling for the next 7 years seems pretty unrealistic though."
The burden of proof is on steve41 to prove that the **current** rate of growth is "pretty unrealisti
http://www
Sloan is the School of Management at MIT, which does not exactly instill confidence in their technical expertise. And I am unfamiliar with the MIT "Laboratory for Energy and the Environment" but that could just be because it's a new department. Energy and Environment is certainly a newer discipline than Management, so I don't make too much of the fact that the "Laboratory for Energy and the Environment" is not well-known for any groundbreaking work yet. But being MIT, they should soon. Maybe this is that first groundbreaking work?
Hint, you "personel Profile" of Huffpost is not a credible source.
"Green energy has been doubling every year for awhile now."
Do you have any links that backup that claim?
“But make no mistake; the (Solar) sector is still in its infancy. Even if all of the forecast growth occurs, solar energy will represent only about 3 to 6 percent of installed electricity generation capacity, or 1.5 to 3 percent of output in 2020. While solar power can certainly help to satisfy the desire for more electricity and lower carbon emissions, it is just one piece of the puzzle.”
http://www
If you have any objections to the **sources** listed on his profile, please enumerate your objections.
Hint, you "personel Profile" of Huffpost is not a credible source.
Gee I wonder WHERE my links are??????
Oh, they are on my Profile!
Gosh, that was hard.
http://www
Unlike nuclear plants that use a self-sustaining chain reaction to produce energy, LIFE's design requires firing the laser to trigger the pulsed release of neutrons that drives a pulsed fission response. Because the fission blanket is always subcritical – incapable of spontaneously starting or sustaining a chain reaction – and decay heat removal is possible via passive mechanisms, LIFE is inherently safe. No runaway reactions are possible.
LIFE is proliferation resistant.
Proliferation risk, the chance that fuel destined for a nuclear power plant could be diverted for weapons purposes, is virtually eliminated with fuel for a LIFE engine. Fuel processing before and after use in a conventional nuclear power plant creates the two biggest proliferation worries. Before use, the fuel is enriched to yield a more concentrated form. That same enrichment process can, and has been, used to make weapons-grade uranium for nuclear weapons. After use, some countries reprocess fuel to recover the unused material still in the fuel rods. This can lead to proliferation because it can make weapons-grade plutonium accessible. By integrating fuel generation, energy production and waste minimization into a single device, the LIFE engine requires neither enrichment nor reprocessing, and there is no need to remove fuel or fissile material generated in the reactor. LIFE engines can use fuels without prior enrichment and then burn them so completely that virtually no weapons-attractive material remains.
https://la
Also, as background, any sane physicist who takes a real look knows by now that pure fusion will be at best way too late to mitigate global warming
So, scanning the above, at first I thought GREAT - thorium and traveling wave reactors maybe get another competitor.
But also consider that Lawrence Livermore lives largely off BIG science, like laser fusion. On that basis what this looks like to me is just a way to keep that massive funding going because unless they pull some old Hans Bethe idea off the back shelf, their funding may vaporize ala the Texas collider project.
Why makes me think so?
Look at the sheer complexity. What would even one such plant really cost? Are you kidding me?
And much of the required technology isn't even in place. Having done big and small science much of my life, I guarantee you, this is no ten years to a demo project.
They claim this LIFE program is a hybrid of fission and fusion.
I have never heard of this before.
"a hybrid technology that combines the best aspects of nuclear fusion, a clean, inherently safe and virtually unlimited energy source (see Inertial Fusion Energy), with fission, a carbon-free, reliable energy technology that currently provides about 16 percent of the world's electricit
"The system would require about half as much laser energy input as a pure fusion plant, and thanks to the extra gain from the fission blanket, produce 100 to 300 times more energy than the input energy."
I am forced by logic and reason,
to go with the best likelihood.
Which is green energy.
LIFE provides a point source of ICF-generated neutrons to extract virtually all of the energy content of its fuel. LIFE would close the nuclear fuel cycle without the need for chemical separation and reprocessing. LIFE would be proliferat
LIFE would enable the worldwide expansion of nuclear power in a safe, secure and sustainable manner. A number of reviews and discussions of the proposal with energy experts over the last year have been positive and supportive of the concept. A LIFE development team of about 40 physicists, materials scientists, engineers and energy and national security experts from LLNL, the University of California at Berkeley and other institutions is developing a "point design" – the target and laser features for specific experiments – and a path forward for LIFE.
https://la
from fossil and Nukes
to green energy.
pv Solar, wind and waste bio fuels can supply all the worlds energy needs, cheaper, safe, clean and forever.
http://www
That is a BREAKTHROUGH.
Green energy has been doubling every year for several years.
onl 7 more years, and gren energy can replace
ALL OTHER ENERGY SOURCES.
Nukes = proliferation = nuclear war= million year waste = insanity.
Glad you met research!
Take a look at this for the future.
Demonstration of fusion ignition on NIF is expected in 2010-2011 (see How to Make a Star). The LIFE development team is now preparing a "point design" and development plan to demonstrate the associated inertial fusion energy (IFE) and nuclear reactor technologies. The plan includes a LIFE pilot plant for laser and materials testing in the 2020 time frame, followed by a demonstration commercial power plant in 2030.
https://la
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
https://la
James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore note in their book Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming that Monckton has "no training whatsoever in science"
In July 2008 Monckton sent an article to the American Physical Society's Forum on Physics and Society,[30][31] concluding: "it is very likely that in response to a doubling of pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentration [surface temperature] will rise not by the 3.26 °K [sic] suggested by the IPCC, but by
but by
Regarding China, the air must be thin at GISS. You recently wrote a very interesting paper on the Tibetan glaciers melting from all the dirty coal fired plants in Asia leaving ash over the surface. Sort of like ciders spread on the roads after a snow. I certainly hope that paper was not financed with the $500,000 Carnegie grant where the application used a known false claim of the glaciers melting by 2035. Also, in order for athletes to be able to breathe at the recent Olympics, China had to shut down all their industry resulting in cleaner air. Their clean air standards do not even approach those in the US. Their interest is purely self-serving.
I know you feigned interest in debating Don Blankenship of Massy Energy, but backed out on some technicality. As I have previously offered, Lord Monckton is standing ready to debate you on the science. You have my contact information. Are you ready to make your case in a forum where you can be challenged? I suspect not. We would, however, certainly welcome your acceptance
BS
http://see
Though the catchier headline may be to say that Germany's government is yanking the rug out from under its homegrown clean energy champion, the entire point of a feed-in tariff program is to phase the industry to grid parity with its fossil-fuel counterparts.
Coal and natural-gas fired power plants generate electricity for about 20 euro cents per kilowatt-hour. Under the FIT — which is set up to pay a premium for energy generated by photovoltaic panels (the same system can be applied to other sources) — Germany has already gone from a whopping 57 euro cents (c) per kWh in 2004 down to 39c now.
It's all part of a process initiated back in 2000, when the Bundestag passed its Renewable Energy Act. "Cleantech" hadn't dawned yet, and oil was far from record highs it reached later in the decade.
So Germany was ahead of its time and has reaped the benefits of a steroid-injected clean energy economy. Berlin's goal was always to wean producers and installers off the government juice, and that's what we're seeing now.
The come-down hasn't caused the German solar industry to fall flat on its face. Rather, companies like Q-Cells — whose facilities I toured in summer 2008 — are staying on their toes.
It's all part of a process...
If you aren't capable of understanding a process, nobody can help you, Steve, not even me.
"Lord Monckton is standing ready to debate you on the science."
http://www
A man who is so resistant to admitting facts that are documented on video has no credibility on anything, ever again. He is certainly not qualified to dispute Dr. James Hansen.
C Monckton - British Medical Journal, 1987
Cited by 1
http://www
As to any other statements he has made, I won't comment, he could be a genious or moron(again don't know anything about him), but in this specific case he provided sound advice.
While I have always had a bone to pick with humans' near total lack of efficiency in utilizing the Earth's real estate, I have always felt that we needed to cut back, lower the speed limits, eat less, spend more time with family and get back in touch with the soil. Instead, these wealthy interests had positioned themselves to benefit from the rise in technology; and now that they've milked that for all it's worth, they are positioning themselves yet again, this time to benefit from denying that technology to the masses. The issue was never about carbon; only control. Don't think so? Just wait!