NASA’s new battery-powered, 10-engine aircraft takes off, hovers, and lands like a helicopter -- yet flies efficiently like a plane.



http://www.iflscience.com/technology...er-flies-plane

If it is possible to use batteries to charge an aircraft, then batteries can power anything -- even something that needs a high power-to-weight ratio (aircraft are the most obvious example).

A new candidate the explain limited global warming.

Indian Ocean may be key to global warming ‘hiatus’
http://www.nature.com/news/indian-ocean-may-be-key-to-global-warming-hiatus-1.17505?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews
Upper ocean may be storing heat, giving atmosphere a break.

… "The Indian Ocean may be the dark horse in the quest to explain the puzzling pause in global warming, researchers report on 18 May in Nature Geoscience1. The study finds that the Indian Ocean may hold more than 70% of all heat absorbed by the upper ocean in the past decade.”…

David Roberts in Vox: “The obvious truth about global warming is this: barring miracles, humanity is in for some awful (consequences).”

“Here is a plotting of dozens of climate modeling scenarios out to 2100, from the IPCC:”



“We recently passed 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere; the status quo will take us up to 1,000 ppm, raising global average temperature (from a pre-industrial baseline) between 3.2 and 5.4 degrees Celsius. That will mean, according to a 2012 World Bank report, ‘extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise,’ the effects of which will be ’tilted against many of the world’s poorest regions,’ stalling or reversing decades of development work. ‘A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided,’ said the World Bank president.”

“That’s where we’re headed [but] nobody wants to say that. Why not? It might seem obvious — no one wants to hear it!”

“The sad fact is that no one has much incentive to break the bad news … Humans are subject to intense status quo bias. Especially on the conservative end of the psychological spectrum — which is the direction all humans move when they feel frightened or under threat — there is a powerful craving for the message that things are, basically, okay, that the system is working like it’s supposed to, that the current state of affairs is the best available, or close enough.”

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

David Roberts in Vox:

“The obvious truth about global warming is this: barring miracles, humanity is in for some awful (consequences).”
“That’s where we’re headed [but] nobody wants to say that. Why not? It might seem obvious — no one wants to hear it!”

“The sad fact is that no one has much incentive to break the bad news … Humans are subject to intense status quo bias. Especially on the conservative end of the psychological spectrum — which is the direction all humans move when they feel frightened or under threat — there is a powerful craving for the message that things are, basically, okay, that the system is working like it’s supposed to, that the current state of affairs is the best available, or close enough.”

Can you say "values lock"? I've been pushing the concept here forever, but I don't see many outside these forums aware of it. (Sigh.) Roberts gets it.

I am no longer confident in the lockstep sequence of turnings, one generation per turning, four score and seven years for a full cycle. That pattern held reasonably well in Anglo American civilization during the transition from Agricultural Age to Industrial Age civilization. Improving technology was pushing change at a firm and steady rate. I am not confident that you can apply it in other areas and other times. Efforts to match the pattern up in other times and places have not worked well.

However, each of the four turnings -- High, Awakening, Unravelling and Crisis -- are still moods which might arise to describe the state of a given culture. If a problem presents itself, how is the culture responding?

We're still responding to global warming like we're unravelling. Talk, talk, compromise, stalemate and things slowly get worse.

At some point it will be no longer plausible to deny. Until recently, following the S&H pattern, I was anticipating a "Green" generation of prophets at the center of an upcoming Awakening. I'm no longer certain of the timing or response pattern.

Originally Posted by B Butler

Can you say "values lock"? I've been pushing the concept here forever, but I don't see many outside these forums aware of it. (Sigh.) Roberts gets it.

Many people are stuck on the idea that energy consumption itself is the creation of wealth with no harmful effects when it is in fact the destruction of wealth. Believing something after it is shown demonstrably false, as with a non-connection between smoking and health, 'racial' differences in character and ability, or young-earth creationism looks like values lock.

I am no longer confident in the lockstep sequence of turnings, one generation per turning, four score and seven years for a full cycle. That pattern held reasonably well in Anglo American civilization during the transition from Agricultural Age to Industrial Age civilization. Improving technology was pushing change at a firm and steady rate. I am not confident that you can apply it in other areas and other times. Efforts to match the pattern up in other times and places have not worked well.

Can the generational cycle freeze? Arnold Toynbee may not have used the generational cycle to express any pattern in history except for the intriguing concept that an old pattern of life (like speaking the language of the Old Country) takes roughly 75 years to disappear. But such is not automatic. A country might become so isolated that it generally avoids Crisis Wars that would force the country (for Toynbee the unit is the civilization and not some nation-state) to face its deficiencies in a Crisis Era in one century or another -- and that it becomes so tradition-bound that when it finally experiences a Crisis imposed from outside it is unable to cope. Ethiopia, a country long on the brink of having a sophisticated civilization, didn't quite become another Greece or Rome. (The problem isn't the climate; Addis Ababa has a fairly good climatic analogue in Mexico City, which had a sophisticated civilization before Hernan Cortez conquered the Aztec Empire).

Crises of the latter-middle of the 19th century in France (Franco-Prussian War and the Commune) and Germany (Austro-German and Franco-Prussian War with national unification), the Italian unification, and the Meiji Restoration in Japan aren't far off from the American Civil War in time -- and all five countries experienced the same Crisis in the Great Depression and World War II, if with different results.

However, each of the four turnings -- High, Awakening, Unravelling and Crisis -- are still moods which might arise to describe the state of a given culture. If a problem presents itself, how is the culture responding?

We're still responding to global warming like we're unravelling. Talk, talk, compromise, stalemate and things slowly get worse.

The talk by at least one side is pure bluster even when the other has quantitative evidence. Who are we to believe -- those who deny global warming or our lying minds?

At some point it will be no longer plausible to deny. Until recently, following the S&H pattern, I was anticipating a "Green" generation of prophets at the center of an upcoming Awakening. I'm no longer certain of the timing or response pattern.

It will take a nasty taste of the consequences of global warming -- one that guts corporate profits -- to force political change. The United States is in effect a plutocratic oligarchy in which nothing gets done until the elites say that they go along. When real estate owners see global warming as the inundation of their properties and when agrarian interests see desertification making their land unproductive, they will change their ways and force political change.

Originally Posted by B Butler

Can you say "values lock"? I've been pushing the concept here forever, but I don't see many outside these forums aware of it. (Sigh.) Roberts gets it.

I am no longer confident in the lockstep sequence of turnings, one generation per turning, four score and seven years for a full cycle. That pattern held reasonably well in Anglo American civilization during the transition from Agricultural Age to Industrial Age civilization. Improving technology was pushing change at a firm and steady rate. I am not confident that you can apply it in other areas and other times. Efforts to match the pattern up in other times and places have not worked well.

However, each of the four turnings -- High, Awakening, Unravelling and Crisis -- are still moods which might arise to describe the state of a given culture. If a problem presents itself, how is the culture responding?

We're still responding to global warming like we're unravelling. Talk, talk, compromise, stalemate and things slowly get worse.

At some point it will be no longer plausible to deny. Until recently, following the S&H pattern, I was anticipating a "Green" generation of prophets at the center of an upcoming Awakening. I'm no longer certain of the timing or response pattern.

I have predicted this, calling the next prophets "green pioneers." But I'm a bit puzzled too, because obviously the millennials (and the current prophets) are going to need to spur new tech in the 2020s, and much will be done through the late 4T and the 1T. Solar and wind energy and electric cars and more will be well on their way. But prophets (unlike civics) are not just about tech; prophets will be back in the late 2040s to spur once again a revival of life. It will be as much about how we live as about whether we live. A more natural, ecological and fulfilling lifestyle, and revival of new age/counter-cultural interests, will happen, as well as demands to push further toward political and institutional change than millennials were willing to go. More change will be needed, because the residual effects of climate change will be with us for decades to come. Recapture of carbon and reforestation, as well as further greening of energy and industry, will be needed.

And there will be much about restablishing community, escaping from millennial virtual-reality tech lifestyles, developing cooperatives, education that involves, and communities that foster relationship with other humans and nature. Redesign of cities and rediscovery of organic psychedelic arts will be big movements. And the next prophets will help the millennials, in charge at the start of the next awakening, to push forward a new great society, spreading the wealth more equally here and abroad.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I have predicted this, calling the next prophets "green pioneers." But I'm a bit puzzled too, because obviously the millennials (and the current prophets) are going to need to spur new tech in the 2020s, and much will be done through the late 4T and the 1T.

The above arrangement works for me. GenX apparently has to do nothing except what is does best at, slacking. I'll be glad to watch from retirement acres and watch Boomers and Millies do stuff.

Solar and wind energy and electric cars and more will be well on their way. But prophets (unlike civics) are not just about tech; prophets will be back in the late 2040s to spur once again a revival of life. It will be as much about how we live as about whether we live. A more natural, ecological and fulfilling lifestyle, and revival of new age/counter-cultural interests, will happen, as well as demands to push further toward political and institutional change than millennials were willing to go. More change will be needed, because the residual effects of climate change will be with us for decades to come. Recapture of carbon and reforestation, as well as further greening of energy and industry, will be needed.

Uh no. Millies and Boomers 2.0 will just have the usual 2T bickerfest which is another thing I can sit back and enjoy from retirement acres.

And there will be much about restablishing community, escaping from millennial virtual-reality tech lifestyles, developing cooperatives, education that involves, and communities that foster relationship with other humans and nature. Redesign of cities and rediscovery of organic psychedelic arts will be big movements. And the next prophets will help the millennials, in charge at the start of the next awakening, to push forward a new great society, spreading the wealth more equally here and abroad.

... And in the meantime generation MoshPit will be created to snark this and more in the next 3T!

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Uh no. Millies and Boomers 2.0 will just have the usual 2T bickerfest which is another thing I can sit back and enjoy from retirement acres.

I would disagree. The GIs would attack problems big time, and the Boomers through the Awakening were good at drawing attention to problems. The big four problems were civil rights, women's rights, environmentalism and containment of communism vs anti-war. While the four were hardly entirely solved, significant progress was made.

The cost was a feeling of Future Shock. It was not that nothing happened in the 2T, but that too much happened. During the Awakening, the GIs gave the Boomers much of what they were demanding. The Red counter-awakening set up a culture of stalemate that is still with us. The unraveling wasn't spent with the progressive prophet generation pushing for necessary change, but with the conservative anti-prophets attempting (and to a great degree failing) to roll back the change. The Blue Boomers during the Unraveling weren't activists pushing to implement the ideals of their Awakening as prior Prophet generations had been. They just defended stuff already done, letting the torch of additional change flicker and go out. The overdue Crisis isn't about finally implementing overdue problems that have been talked over for generations as in prior cycles. In a sense the Crisis is a lack of idealism and drive for change in a progressive moment.

Massive cultural transformation is very difficult. It is hard to overcome values lock. It helps if a bunch of progressive idealists have been demanding change for two generations before push really comes to shove.

We just don't have that pattern.

Originally Posted by B Butler

I would disagree. The GIs would attack problems big time, and the Boomers through the Awakening were good at drawing attention to problems. The big four problems were civil rights, women's rights, environmentalism and containment of communism vs anti-war. While the four were hardly entirely solved, significant progress was made.

The cost was a feeling of Future Shock. It was not that nothing happened in the 2T, but that too much happened. During the Awakening, the GIs gave the Boomers much of what they were demanding. The Red counter-awakening set up a culture of stalemate that is still with us. The unraveling wasn't spent with the progressive prophet generation pushing for necessary change, but with the conservative anti-prophets attempting (and to a great degree failing) to roll back the change. The Blue Boomers during the Unraveling weren't activists pushing to implement the ideals of their Awakening as prior Prophet generations had been. They just defended stuff already done, letting the torch of additional change flicker and go out. The overdue Crisis isn't about finally implementing overdue problems that have been talked over for generations as in prior cycles. In a sense the Crisis is a lack of idealism and drive for change in a progressive moment.

Massive cultural transformation is very difficult. It is hard to overcome values lock. It helps if a bunch of progressive idealists have been demanding change for two generations before push really comes to shove.

We just don't have that pattern.

If anything we seem to have elites trying to shut down political opposition to their dream of establishing a pure plutocracy with as rigid bars to social mobility as existed in the feudal order. If they could get away with it people would find not only professional ruin but personal pain for opposing the destruction of the environment for quick and high profits or for opposing wars for profit.

The Boomer elite is extreme in its vices yet slight in virtues. It distinguishes itself from other Boomers by having never had to experience capitalism at its worst. People who have never experienced hardships in life have decided that those who have are too resentful to be trustworthy with anything. People who have had to work cr@ppy jobs have learned humility as a survival skill. The Boomer elite is as reactionary as the right-wing buffoons who carry misspelled placards that say things like "Hands off my 'Medickare'!"; it just doesn't show the callow ignorance. Using non-reason to push their heartless, dehumanized agenda may be an abomination to most educated people not part of the elite, but elite money has become the arbiter of politics.

...Awakening culture is all but dead, existing largely as nostalgia. Nothing new is being created within it. Boomers with any intelligence went to something else about when Disco surfaced. Cultural ephemera will not overpower rapacious elites. Idealist generations cannot foist their ephemera upon Reactive and Civic generations who have very different tastes. It's just as well. The mind-rot that is Disco might as well go into the trash-heap of history. Aren't Mahler, Debussy, Sibelius, Ives, and Bartok (Missionary composers) far better than that?

OK, so maybe some of us can dust off those old buttons that say "War is harmful to children and other living things" when someone like Senator Tom Cottonmouth (get it?) suggests that we can have a quick and successful war with Iran that will culminate with cheering masses in Teheran awaiting the freedom that we have to offer. We are going to have enough problems to deal with in a Crisis Era, and one of them (ISIS) is better dealt with with Iran as an ally of convenience than as an enemy. Of course the current Boomer elite must go, as its solutions are little more than further enrichment and pampering of themselves with the entrenchment of class privilege that becomes hereditary.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

The above arrangement works for me. GenX apparently has to do nothing except what is does best at, slacking. I'll be glad to watch from retirement acres and watch Boomers and Millies do stuff.

Cool indeed, but not all Xers will be on the sidelines (that would be an over-generalization; we don't want that ). But yeah, they won't be spurring things forward as much. They will often be the lead resistors. Not most Xers, but the leaders they seem to spring up.

Uh no. Millies and Boomers 2.0 will just have the usual 2T bickerfest which is another thing I can sit back and enjoy from retirement acres.

The bickerfest will be in addition to, not instead of, what I described; just as with the previous Awakening (as Bob mentioned; except that the blue boomers did continue to push on some issues like environmentalism, feminism and consumerism in the 1970s; enough so the corporations felt threatened and compelled to install Reagan to stop them, which they literally did). Bickering is a good bet in the 2040s, but in the 2050s there's a lot of harmonious aspects that will smooth things out; somewhat like the 1970s. Also, I don't see a major war as a bone of contention in the 2040s, if I remember correctly. The Vietnam War lit a giant fuse under the late 1960s.

... And in the meantime generation MoshPit will be created to snark this and more in the next 3T!

That does seem a good bet.

No difference between red and blue, eh?? Get a load of this from wired.com:

UNITED STATES SENATORS stood up for what they believed in today—and it wasn’t pretty. During a debate over construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, intended to carry oil from Canada to the United States, the Senate voted on an amendment—just for show, really—on whether climate change “is real and not a hoax.” Easy question—everyone said yes, it’s real. (Well, not everyone. Good job, Senator Roger Wicker, Republican from Mississippi 1. You do not believe science.) But then Brian Schatz, Democrat from Hawaii, decided to push the issue. He introduced another amendment adding that human activity was a significant contributor to the aforementioned climate change. And the Senate voted again.

The results? Ahem. Fifty US senators affirmed that they indeed do believe that the activities of human beings contribute to climate change. OK. But 49 senators—fully half the upper house that represents our grand republic—do not. So, hey, you go out there and burn whatever carbon you want to? Not sure what to make of that. But we thought you might want to know just which representatives have absolved you of your responsibility to the planet. So here’s a list—of the senators who think climate change is some other species’ problem, and then the senators who wish we’d maybe do something about it.

Voted against the amendment (nay—human activities don’t contribute to climate change)

Barrasso, John (R – WY)
Blunt, Roy (R – MO)
Boozman, John (R – AR)
Burr, Richard (R – NC)
Capito, Shelley Moore (R – WV)
Cassidy, Bill (R – LA)
Coats, Daniel (R – IN)
Cochran, Thad (R – MS)
Corker, Bob (R – TN)
Cornyn, John (R – TX)
Cotton, Tom (R – AR)
Crapo, Mike (R – ID)
Cruz, Ted (R – TX)
Daines, Steve (R – MT)
Enzi, Michael B. (R – WY)
Ernst, Joni (R – IA)
Fischer, Deb (R – NE)
Flake, Jeff (R – AZ)
Gardner, Cory (R – CO)
Grassley, Chuck (R – IA)
Hatch, Orrin G. (R – UT)
Heller, Dean (R – NV)
Hoeven, John (R – ND)
Inhofe, James M. (R – OK)
Isakson, Johnny (R – GA)
Johnson, Ron (R – WI)
Lankford, James (R – OK)
Lee, Mike (R – UT)
McCain, John (R – AZ)
McConnell, Mitch (R – KY)
Moran, Jerry (R – KS)
Murkowski, Lisa (R – AK)
Paul, Rand (R – KY)
Perdue, David (R – GA)
Portman, Rob (R – OH)
Risch, James E. (R – ID)
Roberts, Pat (R – KS)
Rounds, Mike (R – SD)
Rubio, Marco (R – FL)
Sasse, Ben (R – NE)
Scott, Tim (R – SC)
Sessions, Jeff (R – AL)
Shelby, Richard C. (R – AL)
Sullivan, Daniel (R – AK)
Thune, John (R – SD)
Tillis, Thom (R – NC)
Toomey, Patrick J. (R – PA)
Vitter, David (R – LA)
Wicker, Roger F. (R – MS)

Voted for the amendment (yea—
human activities contribute to climate change)

Alexander, Lamar (R – TN)
Ayotte, Kelly (R – NH)
Baldwin, Tammy (D – WI)
Bennet, Michael F. (D – CO)
Blumenthal, Richard (D – CT)
Booker, Cory A. (D – NJ)
Boxer, Barbara (D – CA)
Brown, Sherrod (D – OH)
Cantwell, Maria (D – WA)
Cardin, Benjamin L. (D – MD)
Carper, Thomas R. (D – DE)
Casey, Robert P., Jr. (D – PA)
Collins, Susan M. (R – ME)
Coons, Christopher A. (D – DE)
Donnelly, Joe (D – IN)
Durbin, Richard J. (D – IL)
Feinstein, Dianne (D – CA)
Franken, Al (D – MN)
Gillibrand, Kirsten E. (D – NY)
Graham, Lindsey (R – SC)
Heinrich, Martin (D – NM)
Heitkamp, Heidi (D – ND)
Hirono, Mazie K. (D – HI)
Kaine, Tim (D – VA)
King, Angus S., Jr. (I – ME)
Kirk, Mark (R – IL)
Klobuchar, Amy (D – MN)
Leahy, Patrick J. (D – VT)
Manchin, Joe, III (D – WV)
Markey, Edward J. (D – MA)
McCaskill, Claire (D – MO)
Menendez, Robert (D – NJ)
Merkley, Jeff (D – OR)
Mikulski, Barbara A. (D – MD)
Murphy, Christopher (D – CT)
Murray, Patty (D – WA)
Nelson, Bill (D – FL)
Peters, Gary (D – MI)
Reed, Jack (D – RI)
Sanders, Bernard (I – VT)
Schatz, Brian (D – HI)
Schumer, Charles E. (D – NY)
Shaheen, Jeanne (D – NH)
Stabenow, Debbie (D – MI)
Tester, Jon (D – MT)
Udall, Tom (D – NM)
Warner, Mark R. (D – VA)
Warren, Elizabeth (D – MA)
Whitehouse, Sheldon (D – RI)
Wyden, Ron (D – OR)

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/senator...limate-change/

Have American politics ever been so scummy since immediately before the Civil War? Forty-nine Republicans have just denied objective science on behalf of plutocrats who want science rebuked if it in any way interferes with the maximization of profits.

An MIT report has found that regular solar panels like the ones used today could supply much of the world with power. They believe terawatts of energy could be produced by 2050 and say that investment, not technology, could be the biggest hurdle.
http://rt.com/news/260477-solar-power-world-mit/

The world’s population currently consumes 15 terawatts of power from various energy sources, according to the Economist. Despite making up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, Americans use 26 percent of the world’s power.

The publication, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, shows that no revolution in solar energy needs to take place, as scientists already have everything they need to harness the energy of the sun and turn it into electricity, though minor tweaks may help to improve efficiency.

The US, for example, generates less than 1 percent of its energy from solar power. This is something the researchers are looking to change.

“Our objective has been to assess solar energy’s current and potential competitive position and to identify changes in US government policies that could more efficiently and effectively support its massive deployment over the long-term, which we view as necessary,” Robert Armstrong, the director of MIT Energy Initiative, said in a statement.

The Topaz solar farm in California went online at the end of 2014. It generates 500 megawatts of energy, which is enough energy to power at least 160,000 homes. A terawatt is 1 million megawatts of energy.

The company behind the project, First Solar, uses 9 million solar panels to generate electricity. Crucially, it also eliminates over 350,000 tons of CO2 every year, Techspot reports.

“Solar electricity generation is one of very few low-carbon energy technologies with the potential to grow to very large scale. As a consequence, massive expansion of global solar generating capacity to multi-terawatt scale is very likely an essential component of a work-able strategy to mitigate climate change risk,” the MIT report said.

The study has emphasized the need for more research at a federal level, as well as more development support to help to advance low cost and large scale electricity storage technologies.

Battery technology is expected to be a crucial part of the future development of solar power energy, as the batteries can be used to store electricity during peak production and then dispense it at times when there is no sunshine.

The CEO of Tesla industries, Elon Musk, has been a big advocate of trying to develop better batteries that could help to store electricity.

“Our goal here is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy,” Musk said on April 30, Bloomberg reported. “We’re talking at the terawatt scale. The goal is the complete transformation of the entire energy infrastructure of the world.”

The ability to get funding is out there. For example, the International Monetary Fund has calculated that the fossil fuel industries are receiving $5.3 trillion a year in subsidies, which is the equivalent to $10 million every minute. This is a figure that those looking to promote solar power can only dream of.

The authors of the MIT publication believe that the production of solar power will only increase if carbon dioxide emissions become costly. They admit this is unlikely to happen without a drastic rethink in US government policy.

“The main goal of US solar policy should be to build the foundation for a massive scale-up of solar generation over the next few decades,” the report said.

The researchers point to the example of Germany as a standout in pursuing green energy. In 1991, Berlin adopted a Feed-in Tariff scheme which was a rebate scheme to encourage the production of low carbon source energy.

The scheme was so successful that by 2013 Germany was producing 45 percent of solar energy in the EU, and 27 percent of solar energy around the globe, despite the fact that the country is not renowned for having a year-round sunny climate.

Just a reminder of what could be coming to a region near you:

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Soaring temperatures have gripped parts of southern and northern India in an extreme heat wave which has killed more than 500 people and looks set to continue this week, officials said on Monday.

The hottest place in India was Allahabad, a city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which saw mercury rise to 47.7 degrees Celsius (117.8 Fahrenheit) on Sunday, while the capital Delhi recorded a high of 43.5C (110.3F).

Most of the 539 recorded deaths have been of construction workers, the elderly or the homeless in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, said officials, but some deaths have also occurred in Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal.

The Indian Meteorological Department has issued a red warning to affected regions saying that the heat wave conditions are likely to continue over coming days.

Director of Andhra Pradesh's Disaster Management Department K. Dhananjaya Reddy said 325 people had died of sunstroke or dehydration in the state in the last three days.

"We are advising people not to go to work between 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.," said Reddy. "We have also opened centers in different places specially in urban areas for the distribution of water and butter milk."

The government has canceled the leave of all doctors as hospitals were being flooded with cases of heat-stroke, he said, adding that compensation of 100,000 rupees ($1,575) will be given to families of people who had died.

While in the neighboring state of Telangana, where 204 people have died, officials have advised people to stay indoors during peak afternoon hours, drink plenty of fluids and wear loose clothing.

Taxi drivers in Kolkata - capital of West Bengal state where four deaths have been reported - refused to work between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. after two cabbies died in their cars last week.

The monsoon, predicted to hit southern India’s coastline on May 31, will bring some relief from the high temperatures, said weather officials.

(Reporting by Jatindra Dash in Mumbai and Sujoy Dhar in Kolkata, Writing by Nita Bhalla, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...n_7436172.html

LMFAO!!!



These 12 goons all look just like Alfred E. Neuman!

There are now twice as many solar jobs as coal jobs

By Tim McDonnell on 15 Jan 2015

Back in 2006, SolarCity was a small Bay Area solar energy startup with a handful of employees. Before long, according to CEO Lyndon Rive, the company was doubling in size every year to keep up with voracious demand for rooftop solar systems. Today, the company has over 9,000 employees spread across 65 offices nationwide; they’re are busy every day designing, selling, and installing solar systems.

Similar stories are playing out at solar companies across the country. The U.S. solar boom is taking off at breathtaking speed — even though solar is still a tiny slice of the American energy pie, it has by far the fastest growth of any energy source, and it’s adding jobs apace. As of November 2014, the U.S. solar industry employed 173,807 people, up 21.8 percent from a year before, according to a new survey by the Solar Foundation, a nonprofit research outfit.

That’s 10 times faster than job growth in the overall U.S. economy, which was just 2 percent over the same time period, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Solar employment is also outpacing job growth in the fossil fuel industry. Solar jobs now outnumber coal mining jobs 2-to-1 and are quickly catching up to jobs in oil and gas extraction, as well.



What’s behind that growth? Aside from the fact that the solar sector is growing rapidly, solar is an industry that simply requires a lot of boots on the ground. A 2012 University of Tennessee study found that solar employs more people per megawatt-hour of electricity than any other energy source. That’s largely because of the labor needed to install new rooftop systems every day, SolarCity’s Rive said. Installers make up more than half of the jobs counted in today’s survey (other categories include sales and manufacturing).

Don’t expect this kind of growth to last forever, Rive said. Installation is becoming more efficient, and the industry is expecting a slowdown in growth in 2017 when a major federal tax credit is set to expire. The survey reported that of the 2,000 solar-related businesses surveyed, 73 percent said that tax credit “significantly improved” business. U.S. manufacturing is also continually at risk from cheap imported panels from China, although part of President Barack Obama’s recent climate deal with that country is aimed at resolving clean energy trade disputes.

This story was produced as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-coal-economy-jobs

High Texas!



https://www.texastribune.org/2015/05...rgely-ignored/

Blog from the Washington Post:

Last week, I blogged about a striking figure created by evolutionary biologist Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education, plotting U.S. based faiths and denominations based on 1) their members’ views about the reality of human evolution and 2) those members’ support for tough environmental laws.

The figure (below) has created much discussion, both because of what it seems to suggest about the unending debate over the relationship between science and religion, but also because of how it appears to confirm that more conservative leaning denominations harbor a form of science resistance that extends well beyond evolution rejection and into the climate change arena.



Can anyone explain the anomaly of the Jehovah's Witnesses? Otherwise this looks like a strong correlation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/e...business_pop_b

Some good clarification in this article about climate change and weather:
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/the-...nge-explained/

NOAA has a chart which debunks recent "conservative" contentions that recent global warming is a hoax:



“But fortunately we now have an answer. A new paper released today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration finds that the apparent slowdown in warming was an artifact of mis-measurement. The Earth is not warming at a slower rate. It’s warming at the same fast pace as it did the previous decade.”

(I have yet to see what is so "fortunate" about the finding).

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/ea...a5632.abstract

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

NOAA has a chart which debunks recent "conservative" contentions that recent global warming is a hoax:

From Realclimate, here is another summary of recent efforts to debunk the "hiatus".

Our red-state denier choir brings the US down to the bottom of enlightenment about climate change.

http://www.ipsosglobaltrends.com/environment.html

Scientists conclude that global warming never went on 'hiatus'

Federal scientists studied temperature readings from ocean buoys and weather stations around the world and determined that global temperatures did not plateau at the turn of the century, as had been previously concluded. (Linda Stratton / NOAA)
By MONTE MORIN contact the reporter Environmental Science Climate Change Marine Science Geology Scientific Research Weather National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Contrary to prior reports, global temperatures did not stop rising around the turn of the century, study says
Detailed measurements of surface temperatures around the world show no break in decades-long warming trend

A fresh look at the way sea temperatures are measured has led government scientists to make a surprising claim: The puzzling apparent hiatus in global surface warming never really happened.

In a study published Thursday in the prestigious journal Science, researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote that Earth's global average surface temperature had climbed 0.2 of a degree Fahrenheit each decade since 1950, without interruption, due to the heat-trapping effects of greenhouse gases.

That conclusion seemingly negated an awkward piece of evidence in the debate over whether human activity is indeed warming the planet.



Mainstream scientists have struggled to explain to the public how climate change can be getting worse if the warming of the planet's surface slowed at the turn of the century. Their various theories have chalked it up to dust and ash blasted into the sky by volcanic eruptions, a rare period of calm in the solar cycle, and heat absorption by the Pacific Ocean and other waters.

Meanwhile, climate change skeptics have embraced the hiatus as evidence that climatologists have greatly miscalculated the warming effects of fossil-fuel emissions.

The new findings — which are based on measurements from thousands of land stations, ships and buoys at sea going back to 1880 — drew criticism from people on both sides of the rancorous debate over man-made climate change.....

“It's always good to go back and look at the data as carefully as possible and make sure it's calibrated correctly,” said William Patzert, a climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. “But the hiatus is history and it was real.”

The idea that the ominous rise in Earth's average surface temperature had begun to slow in 1998 was acknowledged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, in 2013. The panel determined that from 1998 to 2012, the warming trend was just one-third to one-half what the trend was from 1951 to 2012.....

The researchers also argued that the IPCC's decision to use 1998 as a start of the hiatus skewed the results. That year marked an extreme El Niño, a period of unusually warm sea surface temperatures.

“If you start a short-time series on an anomalous value, you tend to get an anomalous trend,” Karl said.

Since the IPCC acknowledged a warming slowdown in 2013, global average temperatures have resumed their upward trend....