Markell, PSC sued over Bloom Energy deal

Resident, competitor say state aid for Bloom is discriminatory

A Middletown resident and a Connecticut fuel cell manufacturer have filed suit against Gov. Jack Markell and the Public Service Commission, seeking to invalidate the law passed last year that enables a Bloom Energy factory and electrical projects in Delaware.

John Nichols and FuelCell Energy Inc., of Danbury, Conn., filed suit in U.S. District Court in Delaware on Wednesday, also seeking to invalidate a surcharge for Delmarva Power ratepayers that will subsidize two energy-generating clusters operated by a Bloom subsidiary.


Last year, lawmakers changed state code to allow Delmarva Power to count purchases from Bloom Energy’s solid-oxide fuel cell servers toward its state renewable energy purchase requirements.

After receiving PSC approval, Delmarva agreed to pay for Bloom to put 30 megawatts of its electricity onto the regional grid from two electrical projects in New Castle County.

READ MORE:  http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20120622/BUSINESS06/306220016/Markell-PSC-sued-over-Bloom-Energy-deal?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Home|p&nclick_check=1

N.C. Senate approves sea level calculation bill

RALEIGH, N.C.

The North Carolina Senate has approved a bill that ignores scientists' warnings of rising sea levels.
Senators approved the bill on a 34-to-11 vote Tuesday. The measure received little fanfare and no senators spoke in opposition to the measure.

The bill now goes back to the House for a vote.

HB 819 says that only the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission can calculate how fast the sea is rising for state governmental purposes and those calculations must be based on historic trends, which are much lower than the science panel's projections.

A state-appointed science panel warned sea levels could rise by more than three feet by 2100 and threaten more than 2,000 square miles of coastal land.

READ MORE:  http://hamptonroads.com/2012/06/nc-senate-approves-sea-level-calculation-bill

How sea level rules would hinder N.C.’s coast

The recent committee approval of House Bill 819 in the state Senate was, as expected, widely criticized by sea level rise “believers.” Members of NC 20, who are labeled “deniers,” are routinely accused of not understanding science and for requesting legislative intervention based purely on economics. Let’s take a look at those accusations.

First, note that fears of global warming and accelerated sea level rise are reminiscent of previous climate change concerns, only in reverse. Newsweek magazine, in the April 28, 1975, edition, in an article entitled “The Cooling World,” warned of “drastic decline in food production” and opined that “resulting famines would be catastrophic” due to global cooling. Foremost among the scientists predicting this doomsday scenario were those from NOAA, the very agency now part of the current doomsday scenario of global warming, massive ice melt and a “hockey stick” sea level rise. If the climate change community was totally wrong 37 years ago, shouldn’t we be a little bit leery of their prediction today of a massive sea level rise 88 years hence?

Second, despite warnings of an accelerating sea level rise, Dr. Robert Dean, professor emeritus at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and his co-author, Dr. James Houston, director emeritus of the Engineer Research and Development Center, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, concluded in a recent paper (which Dean summarized in a recent presentation to NC 20): “The results of all of our analyses are consistent – there is no indication of an overall world-wide sea level acceleration in the 20th Century data. Rather, it appears that a weak deceleration was present.”

READ MORE:  http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/06/20/2147302/how-sea-level-rules-would-hinder.html

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/06/20/2147302/how-sea-level-rules-would-hinder.html#storylink=cpy

EPA blasted for requiring oil refiners to add type of fuel that's merely hypothetical

Federal regulations can be maddening, but none more so than a current one that demands oil refiners use millions of gallons of a substance, cellulosic ethanol, that does not exist.

"As ludicrous as that sounds, it's fact," says Charles Drevna, who represents refiners. "If it weren't so frustrating and infuriating, it would be comical."

And Tom Pyle of the Institute of Energy Research says, "the cellulosic biofuel program is the embodiment of government gone wild."

Refiners are at their wit's end because the government set out requirements to blend cellulosic ethanol back in 2005, assuming that someone would make it. Seven years later, no one has.

"None, not one drop of cellulosic ethanol has been produced commercially. It's a phantom fuel," says Pyle. "It doesn't exist in the market place."

Read more:  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/21/regulation-requires-oil-refiners-use-millions-gallons-fuel-that-is-nonexistent/

Natural Gas a Raging Bull in Its Battle With Coal

For U.S. power plant operators, the economics of natural gas may have already dethroned coal as the nation's key source of electrical power.

Source: AEP AEP’s Philip Sporn coal-fired power plant in West Virginia. It was partially retired in 2011 and is slated to be entirely mothballed by 2016.

"Natural gas is, and is likely to remain, the low-cost option for new generation capacity," says Mark Fulton, managing director of Deutsche Bank's DB Climate Change Advisors.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration, EIA, estimates that nearly 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are recoverable in shale formations, like the Marcellus one that spans New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, significantly boosting national gas reserves to what some estimate is a 100-plus-year supply.

READ MORE:    http://www.cnbc.com/id/47279731

$9 Billion in ‘Stimulus’ for Solar, Wind Projects Made 910 Final Jobs -- $9.8 Million Per Job

(CNSNews.com) –

The Obama administration distributed $9 billion in economic “stimulus” funds to solar and wind projects in 2009-11 that created, as the end result, 910 “direct” jobs -- annual operation and maintenance positions -- meaning that it cost about $9.8 million to establish each of those long-term jobs.

At the same time, those green energy projects also created, in the end, about 4,600 “indirect” jobs – positions indirectly supported by the annual operation and maintenance jobs -- which means they cost about $1.9 million each ($9 billion divided by 4,600).

Combined (910 + 4,600 = 5,510), the direct and indirect jobs cost, on average, about $1.63 million each to produce.

READ MORE:  http://cnsnews.com/news/article/9-billion-stimulus-solar-wind-projects-made-910-final-jobs-98-million-job

Global warming: second thoughts of an environmentalist

Fritz Vahrenholt, one of Germany's earliest green energy investors, is not convinced that humanity is causing catastrophic global warming. 

 

Scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are quite certain: by using fossil fuels man is currently destroying the climate and our future. We have one last chance, we are told: quickly renounce modern industrial society – painfully but for a good cause.

For many years, I was an active supporter of the IPCC and its CO2 theory. Recent experience with the UN's climate panel, however, forced me to reassess my position. In February 2010, I was invited as a reviewer for the IPCC report on renewable energy. I realised that the drafting of the report was done in anything but a scientific manner. The report was littered with errors and a member of Greenpeace edited the final version. These developments shocked me. I thought, if such things can happen in this report, then they might happen in other IPCC reports too.

Good practice requires double-checking the facts. After all, geoscientists have checked the pre-industrial climate, over the past 10,000 years: this isolates natural climate drivers. According to the IPCC, natural factors hardly play any role in today's climate so we would expect a rather flat and boring climate history.

READ MORE:   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9338939/Global-warming-second-thoughts-of-an-environmentalist.html

Women march in Rio to protest 'green economy'

Thousands of women representing social and farm movements marched in central Rio Monday to rail against the "green economy" advocated by the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development.

Behind a large banner from the international peasant movement Via Campesina proclaiming "the peoples are against the mercantilization of nature", they marched several miles to the Flamengo park, the venue for the "People's Summit" organized by civil society groups on the sidelines of the Rio+20 event.
Several hundred men closed off the march to show their solidarity.

Perched atop a truck fitted with loudspeakers, a female activist howled: "This is a march of urban and rural women against this Rio+20 charade."

"No to green capitalism! Yes to an economy based on solidarity, yes to people's sovereignty," she added.

READ MORE:  http://ca.news.yahoo.com/women-march-rio-protest-green-economy-174353168.html

Carbon Corruption

The U.N. is funneling millions of dollars worth of tradable carbon credits to corrupt nations worldwide, including Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Uzbekistan in an attempt to encourage clean energy projects in the developing world.

The U.N. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is defined in Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol. Western European countries fund energy projects in the developing world in order to obtain Certified Emission Reduction credits (CERs), tradable credits that enable Europeans to count foreign emission reductions towards their own domestic emission reduction targets.

READ MORE:   http://freebeacon.com/carbon-corruption/

Sunday Reflection: The truth about Germany and the 'clean energy economy'

President Obama recently came under fire for referring to "Polish death camps" in a prepared speech, reflecting a certain lack of awareness of matters European. This episode reminded us of something else, of greater concern to U.S. voters: Obama's speechwriters appear to also be unaware that the German media is available online. In English.


It is hard to explain otherwise how they continue sending Mr. Obama out to cite Germany's energy sector as a model for driving America's economic recovery.

Look back to when the candidate and then the new President Obama gave eight speeches touting Spain as the model for his "clean energy economy." As Spanish experts quickly pointed out, Spain's clean energy reality was in fact a disaster, even if this detail was ultimately lost amid a flood of news about the country's broader economic collapse.

This proved terribly embarrassing, and President Obama stopped giving that speech. He did not, however, stop pushing those policies that he claimed were an imitation of Spain's. Apparently assuming yet again that no one would look more closely, Obama now points to Germany as his success story.

READ MORE:   http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2012/06/sunday-reflection-truth-about-germany-and-clean-energy-economy/686896

EPA power grab to regulate ditches, gullies on private property

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By: Audrey Hudson

Lawmakers are working to block an unprecedented power grab by the Environmental Protection Agency to use the Clean Water Act (CWA) and control land alongside ditches, gullies and other ephemeral spots by claiming the sources are part of navigable waterways.

These temporary water sources are often created by rain or snowmelt, and would make it harder for private property owners to build in their own backyards, grow crops, raise livestock and conduct other activities on their own land, lawmakers say.

“Never in the history of the CWA has federal regulation defined ditches and other upland features as ‘waters of the United States,’” said Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), the ranking committee member, and Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), chairman of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.

READ MORE:   http://www.humanevents.com/2012/06/11/epa-power-grab-to-regulate-ditches-gullies-on-private-property/

What's Holding Antarctic Sea Ice Back From Melting?

Global temperatures are increasing. Sea levels are rising. Ice sheets in many areas of the world are retreating. Yet there’s something peculiar going on in the oceans around Antarctica: even as global air and ocean temperatures march upward, the extent of the sea ice around the southern continent isn’t decreasing. In fact, it's increasing.

Sea ice at the other end of the world has been making headlines in recent years for retreating at a breakneck pace. Satellite measurements show that, on average, Arctic sea ice has decreased by four percent per decade since the late 1970s, explained Claire Parkinson, a cryospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who has been tracking the movements of the ice for 30 years. Antarctic sea ice, in contrast, has expanded northward by about 1 percent — the equivalent to 100,000 square kilometers (38,610 square miles) — per decade.

Why is there such a drastic difference in the behavior of the two poles? Scientists from Goddard and the University of Washington, Seattle, recently described three theories — ozone depletion, changing ocean dynamics, and the flooding of sea ice — for what's happening in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.

READ MORE:  http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/antarctic_melting.html

Boffins: Arctic cooled to pre-industrial levels from 1950-1990

Late 20th century saw polar chill as CO₂ rose

New research by German and Russian scientists indicates that summer temperatures in the Arctic actually fell for much of the later 20th century, plunging to the levels seen at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

The new results are said by their authors to indicate that solar activity exerted a powerful influence over Arctic climate until the 1990s, an assertion which will cause some irritation among academics who contend that atmospheric carbon is the main factor in climate change.

The latest analysis was done using the rings of Scots pines (Pinus sylvestris) from the Khibiny Mountains on the Kola Peninsula, situated between the Arctic Circle and the port of Murmansk. The tree rings were probed by specialist ring boffins at Institut für Botanik at the Universität Hohenheim in Stuttgart, cooperating with colleagues in Russia and at the Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung (UFZ).

READ MORE:  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/02/arctic_treering_cooling_research/

1930s photos show Greenland glaciers retreating faster than today

 BUT NOBODY THOUGHT IT WAS A BIG DEAL

Recently unearthed photographs taken by Danish explorers in the 1930s show glaciers in Greenland retreating faster than they are today, according to researchers.

 The photos in question were taken by the seventh Thule Expedition to Greenland led by Dr Knud Rasmussen in 1932. The explorers were equipped with a seaplane, which they used to take aerial snaps of glaciers along the Arctic island's coasts.

After the expedition returned the photographs were used to make maps and charts of the area, then placed in archives in Denmark where they lay forgotten for decades. Then, in recent years, international researchers trying to find information on the history of the Greenland glaciers stumbled across them.

 READ MORE: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/02/1930s_greenland_glacier_retreat/

Antarctic ice is growing, not melting away

Ice expanding in much of Antarctica Eastern coast getting colder Western section remains a concern
ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.

The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent's western coast.

Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water, The Australian reports. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.

CONTINUE:  http://www.news.com.au/antarctic-ice-is-growing-not-melting-away/story-0-1225700043191