Land leased for solar power unused » Ventura County Star

ROACH DRY LAKE, Nev. — Not a light bulb’s worth of solar electricity has been produced on the millions of acres of public desert set aside for it. Not one project to build glimmering solar farms has even broken ground.

Instead, five years after federal land managers opened up stretches of the Southwest to developers, vast tracts still sit idle.
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“Goldman Sachs was one of the first applicants to dot the map with potential projects, and since then they haven’t moved on any of them,” said Gregory Helseth, the BLM’s new renewable energy project manager in southern Nevada.

Twitter / David Roberts

Just talked to an academic who thought that Republicans could be reached on climate via a refunded carbon tax. Sigh. Oh, academics...

BBC News - Huge snowfall caused by rare clash of weather events

Scientists have shown that a severe snowfall in North America and Northern Europe in the winter of 2009-2010 was caused by a rare, once in a century, collision of two weather systems.

They concluded the harsh winter and heavy snow was an example of hard to predict weather events, not a change in climate.