Credit: Suttipon Yakham/Shutterstock

This month I had the opportunity to visit the factory and headquarters of 1366 Technologies just outside of Boston, Massachusetts (the company derives its name from the amount of watts per square meter of solar irradiance at the earth’s surface). The 1366 story is particularly intriguing because it demonstrates that – when it comes to solar energy – the march of technology and the potential for improvements is far from over. With the technology to cut solar wafer costs by 50 percent and the business partners to help make it happen, 1366 intends to make renewables even more affordable in the near future.

Many people think of the solar module as the input with the least room to fall, and point to the gains to be had in balance of systems costs – such as racking and inverters – or soft costs, such as sales, design, permitting, interconnection and inspection. And indeed these gains are quite significant: Germany, for example, can install a residential solar system for less than half the cost […]

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Republican Representative Lamar Smith
Credit: rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com

Leading scientists have accused a Republican-led committee of subjecting climate researchers to politically motivated “harassment” amid an increasingly fractious investigation into the activity of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

Eight key scientific bodies have written to Republican congressman Lamar Smith, chairman of the House committee on science, to warn that the committee’s inquiry into NOAA could have a “chilling effect on the willingness of government scientists to conduct research that intersects with policy-relevant scientific questions”.
First EPA chief accuses Republicans of ignoring science for political gain

The letter added: “Scientists should not be subjected to fraud investigations or harassment simply for providing scientific results that some may see as politically controversial.

“Science cannot thrive when policymakers – regardless of party affiliation – use policy disagreements as a pretext to attack scientific conclusions without public evidence.”

Concern has mounted among scientists as Smith has pursued Noaa over what he has called “prematurely rushed” climate data that he claims has been used to suit the policy agenda of President Barack Obama.

Smith’s ire has focused upon research […]

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Overview

A year ahead of the presidential election, the American public is deeply cynical about government, politics and the nation’s elected leaders in a way that has become quite familiar.

Currently, just 19% say they can trust the government always or most of the time, among the lowest levels in the past half-century. Only 20% would describe government programs as being well-run. And elected officials are held in such low regard that 55% of the public says “ordinary Americans” would do a better job of solving national problems.

Yet at the same time, most Americans have a lengthy to-do list for this object of their frustration: Majorities want the federal government to have a major role in addressing issues ranging from terrorism and disaster response to education and the environment.

And most Americans like the way the federal government handles many of these same issues, though they are broadly critical of its handling of others – especially poverty and immigration.

A new national survey by Pew Research Center, based on more than 6,000 interviews conducted between August 27 and October 4, 2015, finds […]

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Here’s an interesting factoid about contemporary policing: In 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from American citizens than burglars did. Martin Armstrong pointed this out at his blog, Armstrong Economics, last week.

Officers can take cash and property from people without convicting or even charging them with a crime — yes, really! — through the highly controversial practice known as civil asset forfeiture. Last year, according to the Institute for Justice, the Treasury and Justice departments deposited more than $5 billion into their respective asset forfeiture funds. That same year, the FBI reports that burglary losses topped out at $3.5 billion.

Armstrong claims that “the police are now taking more assets than the criminals,” but this isn’t exactly right: The FBI also tracks property losses from larceny and theft, in addition to plain ol’ burglary. If you add up all the property stolen in 2014, from burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft and other means, you arrive at roughly $12.3 billion, according to the FBI. That’s more […]

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Officer Daniel Aguirre shoots robbery suspect Aubrey Williams
Credit: AL.com

Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with first degree murder Oct. 24 in the death of Laquan McDonald. A video released by police shows Van Dyke shooting the teenager 16 times.

Van Dyke is an extreme example of a pattern of unnecessary deadly force used by US police. American police kill a few people each day, making them far more deadly than police in Europe.

Historic rates of fatal police shootings in Europe suggest that American police in 2014 were 18 times more lethal than Danish police and 100 times more lethal than Finnish police, plus they killed significantly more frequently than police in France, Sweden and other European countries. (emphasis added)

As a scholar of sociology and criminal justice, I recently set out to understand why rates of police lethality in the US are so much higher than rates in Europe.

More guns and aggression

Such massive disparities defy a simple […]

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