“If the whole world follows through and gets to 140 million electric cars by 2030, the IEA [International Energy Agency] estimates that will reduce emissions by just 190 million tonnes of CO₂—a mere 0.4 percent of global emissions."- Bjorn Lomborg
‘If you think you can save the climate with electric cars, you’re completely wrong.’- Fatih Birol, head of IEA
A swathe of China was blanketed with acrid smog Monday after levels of dangerous particulates reached around 50 times World Health Organization maximums, in what environmental campaigners said were the highest figures ever recorded in the country.
“Regulatory and policy uncertainties in recent months created significant near-term excess supply and price erosion,” Solyndra's CEO said.
A California-based solar company that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration announced Wednesday that it will shut down.
The company, Solyndra Inc., said Wednesday it would suspend its manufacturing operations and lay off 1,100 employees effective immediately. The company said it intends to file a petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
“Regulatory and policy uncertainties in recent months created significant near-term excess supply and price erosion,” Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison said in a statement. “Raising incremental capital in this environment was not possible. This was an unexpected outcome and is most unfortunate.”
Solyndra received the $535 million stimulus loan guarantee from the Energy Department in 2009 to help finance the construction of a new plant to manufacture solar panels.
Much-arrested Hollywood actress Daryl Hannah was taken away from the White House in restraints Tuesday afternoon. Hannah was taking part in an ongoing protest against the unbuilt Keystone XL oil pipeline. "Sometimes it's necessary to sacrifice your freedom for a greater freedom," Hannah said in Lafayette Park before her arrest. "And we want to be free from the horrible death and destruction that fossil fuels cause, and have a clean energy future."H/T Memeorandum
Evergreen Solar Inc., the Massachusetts clean-energy company that received millions in state subsidies from the Patrick administration for an ill-fated Bay State factory, has filed for bankruptcy, listing $485.6 million in debt.
Evergreen, which closed its taxpayer-supported Devens factory in March and cut 800 jobs, has been trying to rework its debt for months. The cash-strapped company announced today has sought a reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware and reached a deal with certain note holders to restructure its debt and auction off assets.
Think Global AS plans to liquidate its assets, according to a statement from its exclusive battery supplier, Ener1 Inc.
Ener1, which engineers and makes its batteries in the Indianapolis area at its EnerDel subsidiary, notified investors Wednesday that the company would take a charge of more than $32 million on unpaid loans and accounts receivable from Think Global.
President Obama toured the Solyndra plant in Freemont, (sic) Calif. and gave an address before the press and state officials, including California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, outlining his vision for a thriving U.S. alternative energy sector buoyed by government funding.
"The promise of clean energy isn’t just an article of faith,” Obama said, “It’s not just some abstract possibility for science fiction movies or a distant future or 10 years down the road or 20 years, it’s happening right now. The future is here.” – President Obama, speaking at Solyndra Solar.
Solyndra Solar Panel plant in Fremont, California has wasted a billion dollars, $535 million of those a direct bailout from U.S. taxpayers, and it is going “bust.”
The Solyndra Solar panel plant in Fremont, California served as the convenient “backdrop” for Barack Obama’s “green economy” speeches in California, and other campaigning Democrats.
A Salinas car manufacturing company that was expected to build environmentally friendly electric cars and create new jobs folded before almost any vehicles could run off the assembly line.
The city of Salinas had invested more than half a million dollars in Green Vehicles, an electric car start-up company. All of that money is now gone, according to Green Vehicles President and Co-Founder Mike Ryan.
The start-up company set up shop in Salinas in the summer of 2009, after the city gave Ryan a $300,000 community development grant. When the company still ran into financial trouble last year, the city of Salinas handed Ryan an additional $240,000. Green Vehicles also received $187,000 from the California Energy Commission.
The start-up company promised city leaders that it would create 70 new jobs and pay $700,000 in taxes a year to Salinas.Hope! Change!!
Including the California money, the company... burned through over $700,000 of taxpayer money.
There's lots more at the link so READ THE REST. Discussion via Memeorandum, cross posted to LCR, graphic via Saberpoint.Once out of office, he assumed the leadership of the global green movement, steering that movement into a tsunami of defeat that, when the debris is finally cleared away, will loom as one of the greatest failures of civil society in all time.
Gore has the Midas touch in reverse; objects of great value (Nobel prizes, Oscars) turn dull and leaden at his touch. Few celebrity cause leaders have had more or better publicity than Gore has had for his climate advocacy. Hailed by the world press, lionized by the entertainment community and the Global Assemblage of the Great and the Good as incarnated in the Nobel Peace Prize committee, he has nevertheless seen the movement he led flounder from one inglorious defeat to the next.
(....)You can be a leading environmentalist and fail to pay all of your taxes. You can be a leading environmentalist and be unkind to your aged mother. You can be a leading environmentalist and squeeze the toothpaste tube from the middle, park in the handicapped spots at the mall or scribble angry marginal notes in library books.
But you cannot be a leading environmentalist who hopes to lead the general public into a long and difficult struggle for sacrifice and fundamental change if your own conduct is so flagrantly inconsistent with the green gospel you profess.
The electric car maker that launched its North American operations in northern Indiana has filed for bankruptcy protection in Norway, a major creditor said Wednesday morning.
Think Global AS plans to liquidate its assets, according to a statement from its exclusive battery supplier, Ener1 Inc.
Ener1, which engineers and makes its batteries in the Indianapolis area at its EnerDel subsidiary, notified investors Wednesday that the company would take a charge of more than $32 million on unpaid loans and accounts receivable from Think Global.
From a wind-blasted ridge high above the Pacific Ocean, scientists will begin learning how much of the San Joaquin Valley's air pollution can be blamed on coal power plants and ferocious dust storms in rapidly developing Asian nations.
As United States air quality standards get even stricter, the amount of pollution blowing in from overseas becomes a more significant hindrance to meeting those standards. And failure to meet them endangers our health and costs us money.
Not only have Valley businesses already spent billions reducing air pollution, but motorists from Stockton to Bakersfield will now pay $29 million in new yearly vehicle registration fees because the Valley failed to meet standards for harmful ozone, or smog, last summer.
To be fair, we create a lot of that smog ourselves with our belching vehicle tailpipes. And some of it blows into the Valley from the Bay Area or Southern California. This is the first time officials have attempted to quantify how much ozone is crossing over from Asia.
The Asian problem is complicated. Dirty coal power plants are part of it; they spew pollutants that ultimately cook in the sun and form ozone in the atmosphere. Dust storms in western China are a major source of tiny particles that can also be dangerous to your health. Those storms may be exacerbated by land-management practices in that region, said Anthony Wexler, director of the Air Quality Research Center at the University of California, Davis, and the lead scientist on the new San Joaquin Valley study.
Some progress has been made in Asia, Wexler said. "They're cleaning things up, but they're building power plants like nuts, too," he said. "This is a very, very difficult situation."
The pollution takes about a week to blow across the ocean. It stays high above the marine layer, several thousand feet above sea level, which helps scientists differentiate it from pollution coming from nearby cities.
“the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness.”
Barack Obama's presidential limousine will be exempt from his drive to make all government vehicles environmentally friendly, the Secret Service has revealed.
The president last week insisted that he would use the government's purchasing power to promote fuel efficient cars - insisting 100 per cent of new government vehicles would be 'green' by 2015.
But the Secret Service said that the directive would not apply to some vehicles used for law enforcement and security including the president's Cadillac limousine, according to the Detroit News.
Obama last week announced the plan to make all government vehicles fuel efficient by 2015. (READ MORE).
So, a greenie-weenie Prezie-limo wouldn't be able to deflect bullets, bombs, missiles and other assorted dangers? Perhaps so but it sure seems to me that the Presidential limousine could be outfitted with some sort of ethanol-chugging engine, or "carbon offsets" could be purchased to pay homage to the Left-God Gaia. It doesn't matter if the green engine retrofitting job for the limo would be predictably contracted to the UAW and cost billions of dollars...Obama and America have BIG ideas!
We shouldn't be in the least surprised by any of this: Obama's presidency is ruled by the defiance of basic economic law as evidenced by this Washington Times article, "Barack Obama: Losing $84 billion big success":
Investor's Business Daily reported that even the White House’s Director of the National Economic Council remarked that the Treasury Department Department had a good chance in "recovering most, if not all, of its investment in" GM.
However, a March 16 Congressional Oversight report, tells a different story. It estimates taxpayers will be out of $25 billion. Additionally, the report points out that “full repayment will not be possible unless the government is able to sell its remaining shares at a far higher price.”
That's only the beginning. Both the White House and the Congressional Oversight report omit the fact that during its bankruptcy, GM got a $45 billion tax break, courtesy of the American people. (READ MORE)
...time again to turn on every available light and appliance in your home, barn, garage, workplace and automobile, in an effort to outshine the other two stars in the trinary system. And remember, due to added carbon output, portable generators, and idling road graders, pavers and bulldozers win extra Algore Points based on horsepower and time spent on line. Bonfires will also be awarded Algore Points based on size and the toxicity of fuel.
...four Harvard students are betting that the popularity of soccer around the globe can help reduce the use of kerosene.
They came up with the idea for the sOccket, a soccer ball that generates and stores electricity during normal game play. The stored electricity in the ball can then be used to light an LED lamp, or charge a cellphone or battery.
“Soccer is something you will find in every African country,” one founder, Jessica Lin, told Green Inc. “People play for hours a day, so we thought, ‘Why not try to get a little more out of that energy?’ and that’s where the idea ultimately came from.”
...Early prototypes of the ball use an inductive coil mechanism similar to the technology found in shake-to-charge flashlights. The movement of the ball forces a magnet through a metal coil that “induces” voltage in the coil to generate electricity. For each 15 minutes of play, the ball can store enough energy to illuminate a small LED light for three hours, according to initial trials.
...mining for rare earths is difficult and expensive. The elements are usually found scattered in small fragments among rocks and must be separated and then processed. The procedure is rarely eco-friendly, creating hundreds of gallons of salty wastewater per minute, consuming huge amounts of electricity, requiring toxic materials for the refining process and occasionally unearthing dirt that is radioactive.
The high costs and damaging techniques pushed most rare earth mines out of business in the early 1990s. Only China kept its mines going, positioning itself for the ensuing high-tech boom and the resulting rare earth-hungry products.
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