[GWSG] CA solar; Solyndra; SES too; pv up 70%; cc death rate; Exxon to anarchy; tar sands actions; Hanson blog

[Tilley, Al]

1.  California will use more than $200 million from utility ratepayers to subsidize pv solar arrays on homes and businesses.  Thanks to Brian Paradise for the news.  http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/09/jerry-brown-to-sign-renewable-1.html#storylink=scinlineshare

2.  Joe Nocera of the NY Times explains why the Solyndra failure in itself is not a scandal (though who knows what corruption may lurk).  The government loan guarantee program is meant to assume the higher risk for those projects which fail to attract private funding.  Solyndra’s cigs technology fell to the declining price of silicon pv.  The failure has, however, become the occasion for a real attack on the President, and an attack on support for renewable energy.    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/opinion/the-phony-solyndra-scandal.html?_r=2&hp  “The Solyndra investment represents less than 2% of nearly $40 billion in loan guarantees for about three dozen innovative projects.”  Solar employment has doubled to nearly 100,000 since 2003.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/the-solyndra-panic.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

3.  Stirling Energy Systems has filed for bankruptcy, another victim of cheap silicon technology.  http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/09/solar-shakeout-continues-stirling-energy-systems-files-for-chapter-7-bankruptcy?cmpid=WNL-Friday-September30-2011

4.  Last year the demand for photovoltaics in the US grew almost 70%.  Also covered in this DOE notice:  500,000 low-income homes have bee retrofitted for energy efficiency. http://energy.gov/articles/doe-highlights-clean-energy-jobs-announces-major-new-energy-efficiency-milestone

5.  Climate change was causing 140,000 excess deaths by 2004, according to the WHO.  A new study estimates the impact on death rates in the next 60 years in Europe.   http://www.news-medical.net/news/20110928/Scientists-warn-about-climate-induced-increase-in-death-rates-over-the-next-60-years.aspx

6.  A veteran AP environmental reporter reflects on the course of climate change denial in the US since a prophetic Science article in 1975 accurately warned of the problems ahead.  He argues that while industry propaganda used to drive denial, it is now mostly fueled by anger at any sort of government.   http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110924/ap_on_sc/us_climate_the_disconnect

7.  117 Canadians have been arrested in acts of civil disobedience to protest the current and promised destruction by the production of tar sands oil.  http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105265  Over 1,000 have been arrested in the US.  The US media, as in this NY Times story, depict the protests in terms of the threat of pollution from spills.  The greatest danger is runaway warming, as mentioned in the Canadian story.   http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/partisans-rev-up-for-keystone-xl-hearings/

8.  Jim Hansen, arrested in Washington recently in an act of civil disobedience over the tar sands issue, sums up the situation, suggests “climate dice” as a term to convey what is happening to our climate, muses on the activities of a wounded female Monarch butterfly, and suggests reasons for optimism.  http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110928_Butterfly.pdf
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