QUICK NEWS, August 24: FAITH IN A TIME OF CHANGING CLIMATE; A TEXAS SOLAR BOOM?; WIND COULD BE THE CLIMATE HERO
FAITH IN A TIME OF CHANGING CLIMATE A time for repentance: Implications of climate change for Nebraska
Erin Andersen, August 21, 2015 (The 402 411)
“Will a changing climate bring better conditions or a harsher environment for farmers? Will we see more rainfall or a new Dust Bowl? Yes is the answer to these questions, according to University of Nebraska-Lincoln climatologist and drought expert Don Wilhite…His Understanding and Assessing Climate Change: Implications for Nebraska prompted the Rev. Kim Morrow to leave the pulpit...with the hope that faith, ethics and a moral imperative can change the course of the world…Morrow calls the report a ‘game changer.’ Nebraska and the Midwest states will have it easier than poverty-stricken parts of the world and even the U.S. coasts -- where droughts are expected to lengthen and extreme weather is expected to worsen and last longer...But easier is a relative term, Morrow noted…The changing climate will bring pendulum swings between extremes to our state, said Morrow, director of Nebraska Interfaith Power & Light and now a climate change resource specialist working with Wilhite in the school of Applied Climate Science at UNL…[A]lthough he sees a longer growing season, the less predictable and more variable precipitation also will be evaporated more quickly by the higher temperatures…” click here for more
A TEXAS SOLAR BOOM? Next Texas Energy Boom: Solar; Companies are spending $1 billion on new projects to harvest electricity from the sun
Russell Gold, August 21, 2015 (Wall Street Journal)
“A new energy boom is taking shape in the oil fields of west Texas…Solar power has gotten so cheap to produce—and so competitively priced in the electricity market—that it is taking hold even in a state that, unlike California, doesn’t offer incentives to utilities to buy or build sun-powered generation…Pecos County, about halfway between San Antonio and El Paso and on the southern edge of the prolific Permian Basin oil field, could soon host…several large solar-energy farms responsible for about $1 billion in investments…State incentives in California, Nevada and North Carolina helped fund the construction of many large-scale solar farms…But in Texas, while there is federal financial support for such projects, there are no state subsidies or mandates…Texas currently has only 193 megawatts of large-scale solar arrays…But the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the operator of the power grid that covers most of the state, expects between 10,000 megawatts and 12,500 megawatts of solar-generating capacity to be installed by 2029 [driven by falling prices]. That is roughly equal to the size of all solar farms currently operating in the U.S…” click here for more
WIND COULD BE THE CLIMATE HERO Will Wind Energy Emerge as the Unsung Hero in Fighting Climate Change?
Ronald White, August 20, 2015 (Center for Effective Government)
“While solar energy typically receives the most attention as the ‘bright future’ of renewable energy, there is strong evidence that wind energy will emerge as the ‘unsung hero’ of the renewable clean energy movement…A key strategy for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming included in President Obama’s Clean Power Plan…is to grow renewable energy from its current 10 percent of all energy used in America to 28 percent by 2030…[A Department of Energy (DOE) study concluded wind power can be] 20 percent of U.S. energy by 2030 and 35 percent by 2050…[which would cut global-warming carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector by 16 percent in 2030 and 23 percent by 2050…The avoided climate change damages under this scenario amount to an estimated $400 billion…[and almost 22,000 avoided early deaths and more than 10,000 avoided emergency room visits for asthma attacks…” click here for more
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