Is Facebook’s Android App Monitoring My Phone Calls? [Aardvarchaeology]

Facebook’s Android app seems to be monitoring whom I talk to on my phone. A few days after I’ve called somebody who wants to submit a paper to Fornvännen, or after I’ve texted the mom of one of Jrette’s buddies, the web site will suddenly suggest, “Hey, maybe you might want to be Facebook buddies with this person you didn’t even know was on Fb, and with whom you have no shared Fb contacts!”. And there’s that person.

It’s possible, I guess, that this is actually set off by those people looking at my profile on Facebook. But it’s happened a few times too many. I wonder…

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/16Ofb6q

Facebook’s Android app seems to be monitoring whom I talk to on my phone. A few days after I’ve called somebody who wants to submit a paper to Fornvännen, or after I’ve texted the mom of one of Jrette’s buddies, the web site will suddenly suggest, “Hey, maybe you might want to be Facebook buddies with this person you didn’t even know was on Fb, and with whom you have no shared Fb contacts!”. And there’s that person.

It’s possible, I guess, that this is actually set off by those people looking at my profile on Facebook. But it’s happened a few times too many. I wonder…

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/16Ofb6q

The Tragic Fate of Physicist Paul Ehrenfest (Synopsis) [Starts With A Bang]

When you think of thermodynamics, and how energy, temperature, heat and entropy are all related in a system full of particles so numerous you could never hope to count them all in a thousand lifetimes, there are only a few names that stand out as titans in the field.

Paul Ehrenfest, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Boltzmann and Ehrenfest are perhaps two of the best-known, and while Boltzmann’s tragedy is well known, Ehrenfest’s story is perhaps even more heartbreaking, and has an even sadder ending.

Paul Ehrenfest, his son Paul Jr. and Albert Einstein, Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Paul Halpern has this sobering story that’s very little-known, and even less talked about, despite its importance.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1CRvyNK

When you think of thermodynamics, and how energy, temperature, heat and entropy are all related in a system full of particles so numerous you could never hope to count them all in a thousand lifetimes, there are only a few names that stand out as titans in the field.

Paul Ehrenfest, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Boltzmann and Ehrenfest are perhaps two of the best-known, and while Boltzmann’s tragedy is well known, Ehrenfest’s story is perhaps even more heartbreaking, and has an even sadder ending.

Paul Ehrenfest, his son Paul Jr. and Albert Einstein, Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Paul Halpern has this sobering story that’s very little-known, and even less talked about, despite its importance.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1CRvyNK

The other butterfly effect

Click here if video does not appear on screen.



Humans have come up with many ways to protect ourselves from infectious diseases.



“We used to think we were alone with this, but now we know we’re not. Now we know there’s a lot of animals out there that can do it, too,” says Emory biologist Jaap de Roode in a TEDYouth talk. TED is currently featuring de Roode's talk from last November on its national Web site.



In recent decades, scientists have learned that chimpanzees can use plants to treat their intestinal parasites along with elephants, sheep, goats and porcupines. “And even more interesting than that is recent discoveries are telling us that insects and other little animals with smaller brains can use medication, too,” says de Roode.



For the past 10 years, de Roode has studied monarch butterflies and how they get sick from parasites. He discovered that female monarch butterflies are able to use medicinal milkweed plants to reduce the harmful effects of the parasites on the butterfly’s offspring.



“This is an important discovery, I think, not just because it tells us something cool about nature, but also because it may tell us something more about how we should find drugs,” de Roode says. “Most of our drugs derive from natural products, often from plants. In indigenous cultures, traditional healers often look at animals to find new drugs. In this way, elephants have told people how to treat stomach upset and porcupines have told people how to treat bloody diarrhea. Maybe one day we will be treating people with drugs that were first discovered by butterflies. And I think that is an amazing opportunity worth pursuing.”



Related:

The monarch butterfly's medicine kit

What aphids can teach us about immunity

Tapping traditional remedies to fight modern super bugs



from eScienceCommons http://ift.tt/1DBzLEw

Click here if video does not appear on screen.



Humans have come up with many ways to protect ourselves from infectious diseases.



“We used to think we were alone with this, but now we know we’re not. Now we know there’s a lot of animals out there that can do it, too,” says Emory biologist Jaap de Roode in a TEDYouth talk. TED is currently featuring de Roode's talk from last November on its national Web site.



In recent decades, scientists have learned that chimpanzees can use plants to treat their intestinal parasites along with elephants, sheep, goats and porcupines. “And even more interesting than that is recent discoveries are telling us that insects and other little animals with smaller brains can use medication, too,” says de Roode.



For the past 10 years, de Roode has studied monarch butterflies and how they get sick from parasites. He discovered that female monarch butterflies are able to use medicinal milkweed plants to reduce the harmful effects of the parasites on the butterfly’s offspring.



“This is an important discovery, I think, not just because it tells us something cool about nature, but also because it may tell us something more about how we should find drugs,” de Roode says. “Most of our drugs derive from natural products, often from plants. In indigenous cultures, traditional healers often look at animals to find new drugs. In this way, elephants have told people how to treat stomach upset and porcupines have told people how to treat bloody diarrhea. Maybe one day we will be treating people with drugs that were first discovered by butterflies. And I think that is an amazing opportunity worth pursuing.”



Related:

The monarch butterfly's medicine kit

What aphids can teach us about immunity

Tapping traditional remedies to fight modern super bugs



from eScienceCommons http://ift.tt/1DBzLEw

The surprising core within Earth’s core

Researchers used waves from earthquakes to find that Earth’s inner core has surprisingly complex structure and behaviors.

Researchers at the University of Illinois and colleagues at Nanjing University in China have found that an inner core to the inner core of the Earth. This mysterious inner-inner core – revealed by a novel application of earthquake-reading technology – was announced this week (February 9, 2015). It’s smaller than the moon, researchers say, and has surprising properties that might hold the key to how our planet evolved.

University of Illinois professor of geology Xiaodong Song and visiting postdoctoral researcher Tao Wang conducted the research, who results are available online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Researchers use seismic waves from earthquakes to scan below the planet’s surface, much like doctors use ultrasound to see inside patients. The team used a technology that gathers data not from the initial shock of an earthquake, but from the waves that resonate in the earthquake’s aftermath. The earthquake is like a hammer striking a bell; much like a listener hears the clear tone that resonates after the bell strike, seismic sensors collect a coherent signal in the earthquake’s coda. Song said:

It turns out the coherent signal enhanced by the technology is clearer than the ring itself.

The basic idea of the method has been around for a while, and people have used it for other kinds of studies near the surface. But we are looking all the way through the center of the Earth.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!


These researchers found that Earth’s inner core, once thought to be a solid ball of iron, has some complex structural properties. The team found a distinct inner-inner core, about half the diameter of the whole inner core. The iron crystals in the outer layer of the inner core are aligned directionally, north-south. However, in the inner-inner core, the iron crystals point roughly east-west (see graphic above).

Not only are the iron crystals in the inner-inner core aligned differently, they behave differently from their counterparts in the outer-inner core. This means that the inner-inner core could be made of a different type of crystal, or a different phase. Song explained:

The fact that we have two regions that are distinctly different may tell us something about how the inner core has been evolving. For example, over the history of the Earth, the inner core might have had a very dramatic change in its deformation regime. It might hold the key to how the planet has evolved. We are right in the center – literally, the center of the Earth.

Bottom line: Researchers in China and the U.S. have found that Earth’s inner core has an inner core of its own. The inner-inner core is about half the size of the entire core, or smaller than the moon.

Via University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1vgZYkT

Researchers used waves from earthquakes to find that Earth’s inner core has surprisingly complex structure and behaviors.

Researchers at the University of Illinois and colleagues at Nanjing University in China have found that an inner core to the inner core of the Earth. This mysterious inner-inner core – revealed by a novel application of earthquake-reading technology – was announced this week (February 9, 2015). It’s smaller than the moon, researchers say, and has surprising properties that might hold the key to how our planet evolved.

University of Illinois professor of geology Xiaodong Song and visiting postdoctoral researcher Tao Wang conducted the research, who results are available online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Researchers use seismic waves from earthquakes to scan below the planet’s surface, much like doctors use ultrasound to see inside patients. The team used a technology that gathers data not from the initial shock of an earthquake, but from the waves that resonate in the earthquake’s aftermath. The earthquake is like a hammer striking a bell; much like a listener hears the clear tone that resonates after the bell strike, seismic sensors collect a coherent signal in the earthquake’s coda. Song said:

It turns out the coherent signal enhanced by the technology is clearer than the ring itself.

The basic idea of the method has been around for a while, and people have used it for other kinds of studies near the surface. But we are looking all the way through the center of the Earth.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!


These researchers found that Earth’s inner core, once thought to be a solid ball of iron, has some complex structural properties. The team found a distinct inner-inner core, about half the diameter of the whole inner core. The iron crystals in the outer layer of the inner core are aligned directionally, north-south. However, in the inner-inner core, the iron crystals point roughly east-west (see graphic above).

Not only are the iron crystals in the inner-inner core aligned differently, they behave differently from their counterparts in the outer-inner core. This means that the inner-inner core could be made of a different type of crystal, or a different phase. Song explained:

The fact that we have two regions that are distinctly different may tell us something about how the inner core has been evolving. For example, over the history of the Earth, the inner core might have had a very dramatic change in its deformation regime. It might hold the key to how the planet has evolved. We are right in the center – literally, the center of the Earth.

Bottom line: Researchers in China and the U.S. have found that Earth’s inner core has an inner core of its own. The inner-inner core is about half the size of the entire core, or smaller than the moon.

Via University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1vgZYkT

Reday for IXV event in Italy

Getting ready for IXV's mission in Turin, Italy

Final preps for tommorow's main #IXV event at ALTEC in Torino, Italy. Can you spot the spacecraft & its parachute? http://ift.tt/1KEZyxy

— ESA IXV (@esa_ixv) February 10, 2015

from Rocket Science » Rocket Science http://ift.tt/1KEZyxA

v

Getting ready for IXV's mission in Turin, Italy

Final preps for tommorow's main #IXV event at ALTEC in Torino, Italy. Can you spot the spacecraft & its parachute? http://ift.tt/1KEZyxy

— ESA IXV (@esa_ixv) February 10, 2015

from Rocket Science » Rocket Science http://ift.tt/1KEZyxA

v

Scientists Are Pretty Terrified About These Last-Minute Fixes to Global Warming

The most comprehensive study to date on geoengineering says we probably shouldn’t do it—at least not yet.

Johnno/Flickr

You might have heard of “geoengineering.” It’s the highly controversial theory that humans could slow, stop, or even reverse global warming by “hacking” the planet with epic technological feats that would alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

The idea has been around for a few decades, but there have been only a few actual experiments with it, most recently in 2012 when a rogue American millionaire dumped 220,000 pounds of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean. His goal was to create a massive, carbon-sucking plankton bloom. The effort succeeded, but was condemned by many scientists, the Canadian government, and the United Nations for violating international laws and for forging ahead with little regard for potential ecological fallout.

Every now and then, geoengineering of one kind or another gets floated by the media as a possible silver bullet if we continue to fail to make meaningful reductions to greenhouse gas emissions. But as the plankton debacle vividly illustrated, there are any number of very good reasons why the proposition never seems to get any traction. Ideas for how to do it are either too expensive, too entangled with thorny legal and geopolitical complications, too ineffective, or all of the above.

These issues and more were laid bare today in the most comprehensive assessment of geoengineering to date, a two-volume study involving dozens of scientists that was pulled together by the National Academy of Sciences (a nongovernmental organization that produces peer-reviewed research). The reports offered a fairly damning critique of geoengineering and found that while there could be value in continuing to research the technology, it will never be a panacea for climate change, and we’re definitely not ready to start using it yet.

“We definitely don’t think that we’re ready to say this is something worth doing,” said atmospheric chemist Lynn Russell of the University of California, San Diego, a lead author on one of the report’s volumes.

There are two basic categories of geoengineering, each with its own unique obstacles. The first involves pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and burying it underground, effectively reversing the man-made greenhouse gas pollution that causes global warming. (The plankton incident fits this category; the idea was that the plankton bloom would consume a bunch of CO₂ and then take it to the ocean depths when the plankton died.) The second kind involves “seeding” the atmosphere with particles that would increase its reflectivity—what climate scientists call “albedo”—and send more sunlight back into space.

Before getting into the whys and wherefores of both categories, it’s important to note one key finding of the study: A major risk of all geoengineering is that scientists really don’t know that much about what the risks are. This is a relatively young field, Russell explained, but more importantly, it hasn’t held much attention for scientists because even the most optimistic scenarios for geoengineering aren’t a preferable substitute to the more familiar endeavor of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from cars, power plants, and other sources.

“As a community we’ve been afraid to do the research,” Russell said, “because we thought it would take attention away from mitigating greenhouse gases.”

On that note, this week negotiators from around the world are meeting in Geneva to make strides toward a international climate accord expected by the end of this year. And recently President Barack Obama has announced a few major initiatives—new limits on carbon dioxide and methane emissions—that should slash America’s greenhouse footprint. But progress is still too slow for most climate hawks: Even the usually-optimistic United Nations climate chief admitted last week that the upcoming accord is unlikely to keep global warming within the 3.6 degree Fahrenheit limit called for by scientists and agreed to by governments.

With that in mind, Russell said, “there is an obligation to think about whether, even if climate engineering isn’t a great idea, it might not be as bad as nothing.”

Which brings us back to our two categories. Here’s a useful rundown of the risks and rewards of each, from the report:

NAS

Note the row fourth from the bottom, about how both kinds of geoengineering should be judged; this point is key for understanding why the scientists are against rolling out geoengineering today.

The report finds that existing carbon dioxide removal proposals (like ocean iron fertilization; a process called “weathering” that chemically dissolves CO₂ in the ocean; or giant machines that suck carbon directly out of the air) are too expensive to deploy widely. Even if future engineering advances were to bring those costs down, they would have to be weighed against the costs of the more straightforward route: To stop burning fossil fuels for energy. Pulling carbon back out of the atmosphere on a scale necessary to alter the global climate, the report says, is unlikely ever to be more cost-effective than not putting it there in the first place. One notable exception is reforestation, which is cost-effective and readily deployable (a study yesterday from Oxford University argued that planting trees is one of the “most promising” short-term fixes for climate change).

The outlook for albedo modification is somewhat more frightening, in part because the technology is already relatively cheap and available. China already creates an estimated 55 billion tons of artificial rain per year by “cloud seeding”—launching chemical-filled rockets into the upper atmosphere that accelerate the formation of ice crystals that cause rain. Albedo modification would work essentially the same way, using airplanes or rockets to deliver loads of sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere, where they would bounce sunlight back into space. But if the technology is straightforward, the consequences are anything but.

The aerosols fall out of the air after a matter of years, so they would need to be continually replaced. And if we continued to burn fossil fuels, ever more aerosols would be needed to offset the warming from the additional CO2. Russell said that artificially blocking sunlight would have unknown consequences for photosynthesis by plants and phytoplankton, and that high concentrations of sulphate aerosols could produce acid rain. Moreover, if we one day suddenly ceased an albedo modification program, it could cause rapid global warming as the climate adjusts to all the built-up CO2. For these reasons, the report warns that it would be “irrational and irresponsible to implement sustained albedo modification without also pursuing emissions mitigation, carbon dioxide removal, or both.”

To be fair, plenty of diversity of opinion exists among scientists. One long-time proponent of geoengineering, Harvard physicist David Keith (who was not on the committee behind this report) told the Washington Post yesterday that the technology is nothing to be afraid of: “A muffler is a technological fix for the fact that the internal combustion engine is very noisy, and people don’t have a problem with mufflers,” he said.

The difference in this context is that mufflers don’t come with a host of unknown, potentially catastrophic side effects. Either way, the disagreement this topic inspires just between scientists gives you some indication of how far away we are from making it practically and politically feasible. Still, Russell said, we should continue to research both kinds of geoengineering, if only to be able to express what a large-scale experiment would actually look like.

“The stage we’re at now is not even having enough information to make that decision,” she said. “But if we did put together a serious research program, we would make a lot of advances relatively quickly.”

from Climate Desk http://ift.tt/1KEVMUQ

The most comprehensive study to date on geoengineering says we probably shouldn’t do it—at least not yet.

Johnno/Flickr

You might have heard of “geoengineering.” It’s the highly controversial theory that humans could slow, stop, or even reverse global warming by “hacking” the planet with epic technological feats that would alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

The idea has been around for a few decades, but there have been only a few actual experiments with it, most recently in 2012 when a rogue American millionaire dumped 220,000 pounds of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean. His goal was to create a massive, carbon-sucking plankton bloom. The effort succeeded, but was condemned by many scientists, the Canadian government, and the United Nations for violating international laws and for forging ahead with little regard for potential ecological fallout.

Every now and then, geoengineering of one kind or another gets floated by the media as a possible silver bullet if we continue to fail to make meaningful reductions to greenhouse gas emissions. But as the plankton debacle vividly illustrated, there are any number of very good reasons why the proposition never seems to get any traction. Ideas for how to do it are either too expensive, too entangled with thorny legal and geopolitical complications, too ineffective, or all of the above.

These issues and more were laid bare today in the most comprehensive assessment of geoengineering to date, a two-volume study involving dozens of scientists that was pulled together by the National Academy of Sciences (a nongovernmental organization that produces peer-reviewed research). The reports offered a fairly damning critique of geoengineering and found that while there could be value in continuing to research the technology, it will never be a panacea for climate change, and we’re definitely not ready to start using it yet.

“We definitely don’t think that we’re ready to say this is something worth doing,” said atmospheric chemist Lynn Russell of the University of California, San Diego, a lead author on one of the report’s volumes.

There are two basic categories of geoengineering, each with its own unique obstacles. The first involves pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and burying it underground, effectively reversing the man-made greenhouse gas pollution that causes global warming. (The plankton incident fits this category; the idea was that the plankton bloom would consume a bunch of CO₂ and then take it to the ocean depths when the plankton died.) The second kind involves “seeding” the atmosphere with particles that would increase its reflectivity—what climate scientists call “albedo”—and send more sunlight back into space.

Before getting into the whys and wherefores of both categories, it’s important to note one key finding of the study: A major risk of all geoengineering is that scientists really don’t know that much about what the risks are. This is a relatively young field, Russell explained, but more importantly, it hasn’t held much attention for scientists because even the most optimistic scenarios for geoengineering aren’t a preferable substitute to the more familiar endeavor of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from cars, power plants, and other sources.

“As a community we’ve been afraid to do the research,” Russell said, “because we thought it would take attention away from mitigating greenhouse gases.”

On that note, this week negotiators from around the world are meeting in Geneva to make strides toward a international climate accord expected by the end of this year. And recently President Barack Obama has announced a few major initiatives—new limits on carbon dioxide and methane emissions—that should slash America’s greenhouse footprint. But progress is still too slow for most climate hawks: Even the usually-optimistic United Nations climate chief admitted last week that the upcoming accord is unlikely to keep global warming within the 3.6 degree Fahrenheit limit called for by scientists and agreed to by governments.

With that in mind, Russell said, “there is an obligation to think about whether, even if climate engineering isn’t a great idea, it might not be as bad as nothing.”

Which brings us back to our two categories. Here’s a useful rundown of the risks and rewards of each, from the report:

NAS

Note the row fourth from the bottom, about how both kinds of geoengineering should be judged; this point is key for understanding why the scientists are against rolling out geoengineering today.

The report finds that existing carbon dioxide removal proposals (like ocean iron fertilization; a process called “weathering” that chemically dissolves CO₂ in the ocean; or giant machines that suck carbon directly out of the air) are too expensive to deploy widely. Even if future engineering advances were to bring those costs down, they would have to be weighed against the costs of the more straightforward route: To stop burning fossil fuels for energy. Pulling carbon back out of the atmosphere on a scale necessary to alter the global climate, the report says, is unlikely ever to be more cost-effective than not putting it there in the first place. One notable exception is reforestation, which is cost-effective and readily deployable (a study yesterday from Oxford University argued that planting trees is one of the “most promising” short-term fixes for climate change).

The outlook for albedo modification is somewhat more frightening, in part because the technology is already relatively cheap and available. China already creates an estimated 55 billion tons of artificial rain per year by “cloud seeding”—launching chemical-filled rockets into the upper atmosphere that accelerate the formation of ice crystals that cause rain. Albedo modification would work essentially the same way, using airplanes or rockets to deliver loads of sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere, where they would bounce sunlight back into space. But if the technology is straightforward, the consequences are anything but.

The aerosols fall out of the air after a matter of years, so they would need to be continually replaced. And if we continued to burn fossil fuels, ever more aerosols would be needed to offset the warming from the additional CO2. Russell said that artificially blocking sunlight would have unknown consequences for photosynthesis by plants and phytoplankton, and that high concentrations of sulphate aerosols could produce acid rain. Moreover, if we one day suddenly ceased an albedo modification program, it could cause rapid global warming as the climate adjusts to all the built-up CO2. For these reasons, the report warns that it would be “irrational and irresponsible to implement sustained albedo modification without also pursuing emissions mitigation, carbon dioxide removal, or both.”

To be fair, plenty of diversity of opinion exists among scientists. One long-time proponent of geoengineering, Harvard physicist David Keith (who was not on the committee behind this report) told the Washington Post yesterday that the technology is nothing to be afraid of: “A muffler is a technological fix for the fact that the internal combustion engine is very noisy, and people don’t have a problem with mufflers,” he said.

The difference in this context is that mufflers don’t come with a host of unknown, potentially catastrophic side effects. Either way, the disagreement this topic inspires just between scientists gives you some indication of how far away we are from making it practically and politically feasible. Still, Russell said, we should continue to research both kinds of geoengineering, if only to be able to express what a large-scale experiment would actually look like.

“The stage we’re at now is not even having enough information to make that decision,” she said. “But if we did put together a serious research program, we would make a lot of advances relatively quickly.”

from Climate Desk http://ift.tt/1KEVMUQ

Are Solar Companies Ripping You Off?

Members of Congress and a big utility are teaming up to raise that question. But experts think their concerns are overblown.

Solar panels on the roof of a house in Apache Junction, Arizona. Darryl Webb/AP

Back in December, a group of Republican members of Congress from Arizona and Texas sent a worried letter to the Federal Trade Commission. Solar panel companies, the letter claimed, might be using deceptive marketing practices to lease their rooftop systems to homeowners without fully disclosing the financial risks. The concerns were similar to those raised a month earlier by Democratic lawmakers—also from Arizona and Texas—in a letter sent to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Both letters raised the specter of serious problems in the business model of the country’s fastest-growing energy source. But as the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting revealed last month, the Republicans’ letter was originally drafted by an employee of Arizona Public Service, the state’s biggest electric utility and a long-time opponent of third-party solar companies. The draft was passed by APS to the office of Rep. Paul Gosar (R), which made a few changes, got the Congressman’s signature, and sent it off, according to AZCIR’s report. (The letter is here; the highlights were added by AZCIR to show where changes had been made from the original APS draft.)

It’s not the first time APS has engaged in this type of secretive advocacy to undermine solar, an exploding industry that poses an existential threat to the old-school utility’s bottom line. In 2013, the company outed itself as the backer of two secretive nonprofits that ran an aggressive anti-solar ad campaign in the state. Back then, the company’s target was net metering, the policy that requires utility companies to buy excess electricity produced by its customers’ rooftop panels. Now APS’s focus appears to have shifted to the marketing practices of companies that lease solar panels to homeowners.

“This is the next evolution in the utility playbook,” said Susan Glick, a spokesperson for The Alliance for Solar Choice, an advocacy group that represents some of the country’s biggest solar companies. APS wants “to demonize rooftop solar and ensure they have a monopoly,” she said.

The cost of rooftop solar systems has plummeted in recent years. But some solar companies have realized that many homeowners are still unable to pay north of $10,000 to buy and install panels. Instead, the trendy option is solar leasing: A company installs panels on your roof for free and then charges you a monthly fee for the power they produce, which in theory is less than what you paid your electric utility. A recent industry survey found that about half of all residential solar systems are leased rather than owned.

A spokesperson for Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D)—one of the authors of the Democratic letter—told Climate Desk that Kirkpatrick wanted to “take the lead” on the letter to the CFPB “after receiving numerous complaints about solar rooftop leasing practices in Arizona.” The spokesperson added that “any suggestion that the congresswoman issued the letter because of coercion by the utilities is false.”

The APS-authored letter from Gosar and his GOP colleagues was more specific. It alleged that, as part of their rush to sign up customers before a federal tax credit expires, solar leasing companies have been overstating the savings that homeowners will receive. Neither Gosar’s office nor APS returned requests for comment.

Both letters drew parallels between solar leasing and the subprime mortgage crisis, in which financial companies used shady lending practices to lure home buyers into mortgages they couldn’t really afford.

It’s been a couple months now since the letters were fired off, and the response from the feds has been mixed. On Jan. 12 the CFPB responded to Kirkpatrick and her peers, writing that the agency is “currently studying a number of overlapping issues that may implicate the leasing of rooftop panels.” A CFPB spokesperson declined to elaborate on what exactly those issues are and whether these inquiries were instigated by Kirkpatrick’s letter. An FTC spokesperson said the agency had not yet taken any action on solar leasing. Back in Arizona, last month the state’s Corporation Commission opened a docket to collect preliminary information on solar leasing, with the possibility of a more thorough investigation in the future, a spokesperson said.

So is the congressional prodding warranted, or just glorified lobbying for one freaked-out utility company? For all the noise, actual complaints against solar leasing companies seem to be relatively rare. According to the AZCIR report, Gosar’s chief of staff said he had not actually seen any complaints, and a spokesperson for Kirkpatrick “declined to answer questions about the quantity of reports, the way the reports reached their office, or to confirm that they reviewed any consumer complaints.” The Corporation Commission docket currently contains only one complaint, from a Scottsdale resident who claimed that “uneducated residents are bamboozled into these programs by unscrupulous businesses looking to make a quick buck.”

That was essentially the complaint in a separate 2013 lawsuit against SunRun, a leading solar leasing company, brought by a California man who claimed he was misled about cost savings. SunRun denied the allegation, and that claim has since been dropped, the man’s law firm said. And a smattering of news outlets have reported cases of homeowners finding it more difficult than they expected to sell homes that are attached to a solar lease.

But Travis Lowder, an energy finance analyst with the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab, said complaints like this tend to be rare, isolated incidents that don’t reflect systemic flaws with the solar leasing business model. Lowder runs a team that has spent the last several years developing standardized contracts and practices for solar leasing companies.

“The solar industry has been very proactive on consumer protection laws,” Lowder said. “They don’t want to put the consumer in the position where the consumer is going to default, because they need that cash flow” to support the large up-front costs of solar installations on other roofs.

The biggest issue, Lowder said, comes down the long lifespan of a typical solar lease: 20 years. Over that time scale, a solar lease ultimately amounts to thousands of dollars of debt taken on by homeowners. What’s more, most lease contracts include terms that gradually increase the monthly fees paid by homeowners over time. The pitch to customers is that the solar fee rate will escalate less than the cost of grid electricity. (Over the last decade, the average cost of electricity nationwide rose 36 percent.) The problem is that it’s practically impossible to make iron-clad predictions about cost savings that far in advance. Unforeseen changes to US energy policy or to a customer’s local electricity market, for example, could potentially reduce savings from solar over the grid, while homeowners remain locked in to their original contracts.

Energy investors and analysts make those predictive calculations all the time, but always with a number of assumptions about future market conditions and an appreciation for the built-in uncertainty. So the challenge is communicating that uncertainty to customers.

Solar leases “are certainly not risk-free,” said Nathanael Green, a renewables policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Still, he said, the agitation from APS is “almost without a doubt a politically motivated attack.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s all nonsense,” added Green. “You have to separate out some of the silliness from the real things we can do a better job of.”

Either way, courts and state and federal regulators will now have a chance to weigh in. Because Arizona is among the country’s largest solar markets, with a colorful history of conflict between incumbent power companies and their renewable rivals, the outcome there could set the stage for how solar leasing is treated elsewhere.

Nicholas Mack, the general counsel of solar financing company Clean Power Finance, has worked with NREL on developing best practices for solar leasing. The solar industry will be ready if the government comes knocking, he said: “I do think we can withstand the scrutiny.”

from Climate Desk http://ift.tt/1KEVMEu

Members of Congress and a big utility are teaming up to raise that question. But experts think their concerns are overblown.

Solar panels on the roof of a house in Apache Junction, Arizona. Darryl Webb/AP

Back in December, a group of Republican members of Congress from Arizona and Texas sent a worried letter to the Federal Trade Commission. Solar panel companies, the letter claimed, might be using deceptive marketing practices to lease their rooftop systems to homeowners without fully disclosing the financial risks. The concerns were similar to those raised a month earlier by Democratic lawmakers—also from Arizona and Texas—in a letter sent to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Both letters raised the specter of serious problems in the business model of the country’s fastest-growing energy source. But as the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting revealed last month, the Republicans’ letter was originally drafted by an employee of Arizona Public Service, the state’s biggest electric utility and a long-time opponent of third-party solar companies. The draft was passed by APS to the office of Rep. Paul Gosar (R), which made a few changes, got the Congressman’s signature, and sent it off, according to AZCIR’s report. (The letter is here; the highlights were added by AZCIR to show where changes had been made from the original APS draft.)

It’s not the first time APS has engaged in this type of secretive advocacy to undermine solar, an exploding industry that poses an existential threat to the old-school utility’s bottom line. In 2013, the company outed itself as the backer of two secretive nonprofits that ran an aggressive anti-solar ad campaign in the state. Back then, the company’s target was net metering, the policy that requires utility companies to buy excess electricity produced by its customers’ rooftop panels. Now APS’s focus appears to have shifted to the marketing practices of companies that lease solar panels to homeowners.

“This is the next evolution in the utility playbook,” said Susan Glick, a spokesperson for The Alliance for Solar Choice, an advocacy group that represents some of the country’s biggest solar companies. APS wants “to demonize rooftop solar and ensure they have a monopoly,” she said.

The cost of rooftop solar systems has plummeted in recent years. But some solar companies have realized that many homeowners are still unable to pay north of $10,000 to buy and install panels. Instead, the trendy option is solar leasing: A company installs panels on your roof for free and then charges you a monthly fee for the power they produce, which in theory is less than what you paid your electric utility. A recent industry survey found that about half of all residential solar systems are leased rather than owned.

A spokesperson for Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D)—one of the authors of the Democratic letter—told Climate Desk that Kirkpatrick wanted to “take the lead” on the letter to the CFPB “after receiving numerous complaints about solar rooftop leasing practices in Arizona.” The spokesperson added that “any suggestion that the congresswoman issued the letter because of coercion by the utilities is false.”

The APS-authored letter from Gosar and his GOP colleagues was more specific. It alleged that, as part of their rush to sign up customers before a federal tax credit expires, solar leasing companies have been overstating the savings that homeowners will receive. Neither Gosar’s office nor APS returned requests for comment.

Both letters drew parallels between solar leasing and the subprime mortgage crisis, in which financial companies used shady lending practices to lure home buyers into mortgages they couldn’t really afford.

It’s been a couple months now since the letters were fired off, and the response from the feds has been mixed. On Jan. 12 the CFPB responded to Kirkpatrick and her peers, writing that the agency is “currently studying a number of overlapping issues that may implicate the leasing of rooftop panels.” A CFPB spokesperson declined to elaborate on what exactly those issues are and whether these inquiries were instigated by Kirkpatrick’s letter. An FTC spokesperson said the agency had not yet taken any action on solar leasing. Back in Arizona, last month the state’s Corporation Commission opened a docket to collect preliminary information on solar leasing, with the possibility of a more thorough investigation in the future, a spokesperson said.

So is the congressional prodding warranted, or just glorified lobbying for one freaked-out utility company? For all the noise, actual complaints against solar leasing companies seem to be relatively rare. According to the AZCIR report, Gosar’s chief of staff said he had not actually seen any complaints, and a spokesperson for Kirkpatrick “declined to answer questions about the quantity of reports, the way the reports reached their office, or to confirm that they reviewed any consumer complaints.” The Corporation Commission docket currently contains only one complaint, from a Scottsdale resident who claimed that “uneducated residents are bamboozled into these programs by unscrupulous businesses looking to make a quick buck.”

That was essentially the complaint in a separate 2013 lawsuit against SunRun, a leading solar leasing company, brought by a California man who claimed he was misled about cost savings. SunRun denied the allegation, and that claim has since been dropped, the man’s law firm said. And a smattering of news outlets have reported cases of homeowners finding it more difficult than they expected to sell homes that are attached to a solar lease.

But Travis Lowder, an energy finance analyst with the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab, said complaints like this tend to be rare, isolated incidents that don’t reflect systemic flaws with the solar leasing business model. Lowder runs a team that has spent the last several years developing standardized contracts and practices for solar leasing companies.

“The solar industry has been very proactive on consumer protection laws,” Lowder said. “They don’t want to put the consumer in the position where the consumer is going to default, because they need that cash flow” to support the large up-front costs of solar installations on other roofs.

The biggest issue, Lowder said, comes down the long lifespan of a typical solar lease: 20 years. Over that time scale, a solar lease ultimately amounts to thousands of dollars of debt taken on by homeowners. What’s more, most lease contracts include terms that gradually increase the monthly fees paid by homeowners over time. The pitch to customers is that the solar fee rate will escalate less than the cost of grid electricity. (Over the last decade, the average cost of electricity nationwide rose 36 percent.) The problem is that it’s practically impossible to make iron-clad predictions about cost savings that far in advance. Unforeseen changes to US energy policy or to a customer’s local electricity market, for example, could potentially reduce savings from solar over the grid, while homeowners remain locked in to their original contracts.

Energy investors and analysts make those predictive calculations all the time, but always with a number of assumptions about future market conditions and an appreciation for the built-in uncertainty. So the challenge is communicating that uncertainty to customers.

Solar leases “are certainly not risk-free,” said Nathanael Green, a renewables policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Still, he said, the agitation from APS is “almost without a doubt a politically motivated attack.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s all nonsense,” added Green. “You have to separate out some of the silliness from the real things we can do a better job of.”

Either way, courts and state and federal regulators will now have a chance to weigh in. Because Arizona is among the country’s largest solar markets, with a colorful history of conflict between incumbent power companies and their renewable rivals, the outcome there could set the stage for how solar leasing is treated elsewhere.

Nicholas Mack, the general counsel of solar financing company Clean Power Finance, has worked with NREL on developing best practices for solar leasing. The solar industry will be ready if the government comes knocking, he said: “I do think we can withstand the scrutiny.”

from Climate Desk http://ift.tt/1KEVMEu