Not long ago, the legendary economist Amory Lovins showed me two photos, taken 10 years apart, of the New York City Easter Parade. A 1903 shot looking north from midtown showed Fifth Avenue crowded with a hundred horse and buggies and a solitary automobile. The second, taken in 1913 from a similar vantage on the same street, depicted a traffic jam of automobiles and a single lonely horse and buggy.

That momentous shift occurred because, over a 13-year period, Henry Ford dropped the nominal price of the Model-T by 62 percent. While wealthy New Yorkers led the transition, the remainder of America quickly followed. Between 1918 and 1929, according to Stanford University lecturer Tony Seba, American car ownership rocketed from eight percent of Americans to eighty percent - because DuPont and General Motors devised a financial innovation called car loans, which soon accounted for three quarters of auto purchases. The buggy drivers never saw it coming.

Compare that platform for disruption to the economic fundamentals of today's solar industry. Over the past five years, photovoltaic module prices have dropped 80 percent, and analogous home solar financing innovations have spread like wildfire. Three-quarters of California's rooftop solar has been innovatively financed, with no money down, including the system I installed on my own home. NRG Solar leased me a rooftop solar array with zero cost to myself and a guaranteed sixty percent drop in my energy bills for twenty years. Who wouldn't take that deal? And solar costs continue to drop every day.

Dramatic drops have also plummeted the cost of utility-scale solar plants to around $1 billion a gigawatt. Compare this to the $3 to $5 billion per gigawatt cost of constructing a new coal or gas plant, and the $6 to 9 billion per gigawatt cost for a nuclear plant. We can make energy by burning prime rib if we choose to, but any rational utility seeking the cheapest, safest form of energy is going to choose wind or solar. That's why, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, in the first eleven months of 2016 renewables constituted more than 50 percent of newly installed electrical generation capacity—surpassing natural gas, nuclear power, coal and oil combined. Let's face facts. The carbon incumbents are looking at their own imminent apocalypse.

And the real savings for solar and wind comes at the back end—ZERO FUEL COSTS! Unlimited photons rain down on the earth every day for free. Transitioning to clean fuel only requires that we build the infrastructure to harvest and distribute the photons. That infrastructure will bless America with a magical promised era of “free fuel forever.”

Internal combustion engines are racing toward the same kind of apocalyptic disruption as the horse and buggy. According to calculations by John Walker of the Rocky Mountain Institute, the current operating cost of an electric car is about one-tenth the cost of an internal combustion engine. The range and performance of EVs now exceeds those of traditional gasoline cars. That's why the world's 15 top auto companies all launched new EVs in 2015. If you believe in free markets, then the day of the internal combustion engine is over.

The markets have already seen the future. The top 50 coal companies are now either in Chapter 11 bankruptcy or on the brink. The three largest coal companies—Arch, Consol and Peabody—have lost 80 percent of their value over the last two years. Looking at these landscapes, Lovins remarked to me, “The meteor has hit. The dinosaurs are doomed. It's just that some of them are still walking around causing trouble.

read more:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/05/06/read-excerpt-horsemen-apocalypse-d...

Major global investors and American-based businesses have joined environmental and public health advocates in calling on the US to remain committed to the Paris climate change agreement that President Donald Trump has threatened to "cancel."

Major investors addressed their concerns in a letter to Group of Seven (G7) governments that are set to meet in Italy on May 25, as well as to leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) who will meet in July.

"As long-term institutional investors, we believe that the mitigation of climate change is essential for the safeguarding of our investments," says the letter, signed by 214 institutions with more than $15 trillion of assets.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/387619-investors-letter-climate-agreement/

In the Brazilian city of São Paulo, more than 80 experts, including dozens of climate scientists, gathered back in March for a giant planning meeting

As part of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the group from 39 different countries were starting their work on a major report that will tell governments and policy makers what kind of impacts they can expect when global warming reaches 1.5C.

That report is scheduled to be ready in late September 2018 and will assess in detail what’s known about the impacts 1.5C of global warming could have on societies, ecosystems and how it will affect efforts to reduce poverty.

But new research just published in a leading scientific journal is suggesting that just eight years after that report is published, the world might have already reached that 1.5C target – or at least one definition of it (some senior scientists disagree with some of the assumptions in the paper - read on for those important caveats).

Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the research looks closely at the influence of a mechanism in the climate known as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO).

“The IPO is like the long-term version of El Nino – it’s like El Nino’s uncle,” says Dr Ben Henley, of the University of Melbourne and the lead author of the research.

When heat gets trapped in deeper layers of the Pacific Ocean, this is known as a negative phase of the IPO.

Since about the year 2000, the IPO hit this negative phase, which tends to slow down the rise in global temperatures that’s being caused by humans burning too many fossil fuels and cutting down forests.

But around 2014, scientists say that this IPO started to shift, possibly towards a positive phase that would act like an accelerator on global warming.

Henley and his colleague Dr Andrew King, also at the University of Melbourne, wanted to know how quick global temperatures might reach 1.5C, relative to where they were between 1850 and 1900.

According to the paper, the “rate that global temperatures approach the 1.5C level is likely to be significantly quicker, or slower, depending on the IPO.”

After using the latest computer models of the climate and allowing for the added greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, Henley and King looked to see what the coming decades have in store depending on the phase of the IPO.

If the IPO turns positive, then the average across the models shows that global temperatures hit 1.5C in around 2026. If the IPO was to turn negative, then this delays the 1.5C threshold by five years or so.

Henley told me: “Policy makers have to aware of just how quickly we are approaching this level. But that doesn’t mean that the target is not a sensible thing to have.

“While we might overshoot 1.5C, stabilising global temperatures at that level still remains a worthwhile goal.”

For example, if you wait until global temperatures go above 1.5C over a five-year average period, then some models suggest that if the IPO stays negative for longer, the 1.5C breach doesn’t happen until around the year 2040 (but this is an outlier in the paper). 

Associate Professor Julie Arblaster, a climate scientist at Monash University, and who was not involved in the research, told me the research “highlights the role of natural or internal variability in the climate system in hitting climate targets.”

Arblaster pointed to one study published last year in the journal Nature Communications that suggested the switch to a positive phase of the IPO might have already happened.

She added: “Other things also may also impact the timing of course, such as a large volcanic eruption, but this study helps by providing an estimate of the contribution of the climate system’s internal variability in hitting that target.”

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/may/09/planet-could-breach-15c-warming-limit-within-10-years-but-be-aware-of-caveats

Please read also:

What is global warming?

The giant ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland are melting faster than scientists previously estimated, raising the prospect of faster sea level rise placing at risk low-lying areas of Sydney and similar exposed cities around the world.

New research, including from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has lifted the "plausible" sea level rise by 2100 to as much as two metres to 2.7 metres.

That has superseded earlier estimates, such as the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that placed the likely top range of sea level rise at about one metre if greenhouse gas emission rises continued unabated.

Those higher forecasts have now been included in new mapping by Coastal Risk Australia that combines the estimates with national high-tide data and the shape of our coastline.

read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/the-great-unknown-new-c...

This new "lift" is in range of Gus' own calculations which are set between 2 and 6 metres depending on the feedback mechanisms and "tipping points" of global warming -- and obviously the price of fish.

Meanwhile at Turdshit headquarters:

A MASSIVE BETRAYAL of environmental issues is now entrenched in Federal and state government policies.

The failure to provide adequate funding in the Turnbull/Morrison 2017 Budget should eradicate any lingering doubts over the attitude and policy failures of this appalling Coalition Government and the spin-off impacts at the State level. The Budget miserliness is a clue to a much bigger picture.

In essence, the environment has been pushed to the back of the bus. International obligations under conventions that Australia has ratified are ignored. Entire forests must have disappeared to provide for the mountains of paper and verbiage paying lip service to Australia’s unique biodiversity and environmental heritage.  

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/climatefail-t...

Please read also:

What is global warming?

US President Donald Trump has told “confidants”, including head of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt, he plans to leave a landmark international agreement on climate change, Axios news outlet is reporting.

The report on Saturday cited three sources said to have direct knowledge of the impending decision.

On Saturday, Trump said in a Twitter post he was very close to announcing a final decision on the Paris Accords.

read more:

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2017/05/28/us-will-leave-paris-clim...

Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising to the highest figures seen in years, according to official government figures, increasing 1.6% in the last quarter and 1% in the past year.

The country’s emissions in the year to March 2017 are the highest on record at 550.3m tonnes of CO2 equivalent when emissions from land use change are excluded – a sector where the government says its figures have a high degree of uncertainty.

The country’s emissions rose by 1.6m tonnes in the quarter to March 2017, or by 1.1% – a figure that is the same whether estimations of land use emissions are taken into account or not.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/aug/04/australias-greenh...

Slight problem of syncing the chambers. The Liberal senator for the ACT, Zed Seselja, says there’s “a fair dose of hypocrisy” in Labor demanding Fiona Nash table legal advice on her citizenship woes. He argued ACT Labor senator, Katy Gallagher, has not done the same.

But developments in the lower house have apparently not yet reached the Senate, because Seselja went on to slam Shorten for his hypocritical refusal to table his citizenship documents.

“Bill Shorten has never been one for disclosure,” he said.

Labor’s Senate leader, Penny Wong jumped to her feet.

“Point of order, the senator may not be aware, Mr Shorten has now tabled his documents.”

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2017/sep/04/malcolm-turn...

Malcolm Turnbull's extensive frontbench reshuffle has seen science left on the outer, with the portfolio shunted from Cabinet and assigned to a junior minister.

• Putting science into Assistant Minister's portfolio "demotes it", STA spokesperson says
• Zed Seselja will be fourth Science Minister in three years, compounding concerns about rapid turnover
• But the Senator says PM is putting innovation "front and centre"

The move has dismayed Australia's scientific community, which has been frustrated by a succession of changes to the important post.

With the former minister for science, Arthur Sinodinos, stepping down due to ill health, the Prime Minister dropped the role from Cabinet and allocated it to an Assistant Minister, ACT senator Zed Seselja.

"We would much prefer to have a minister sitting at the Cabinet table," said Professor Emma Johnston, the president of Science and Technology Australia (STA), representing the nation's scientific and research associations.

"Putting that science, that fundamental research, into an Assistant Minister's portfolio demotes it, makes it less of a priority, and words matter."

Senator Seselja will be assisting the Minister for Jobs and Innovation, Michaelia Cash, and believes the arrangements show innovation is still central to the Coalition's agenda.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-21/science-on-the-outer-after-malcolm...

Zed is an idiot who has no clue about sciences. Read from top... Meanwhile the Ministry position of Michaelia Cash should be terminated for having lied in regard to a police raid on a union.

And despite the claim by Zed, innovation IS NOT SCIENCE.