Public Solar For All!

Also: weather modification, attacks on the National Academies of Science. Presented by the Center for Alignment of AI Alignment Centers

Author

Brad Johnson
September 18, 2025

PRESENTED BY THE CENTER FOR ALIGNMENT OF AI ALIGNMENT CENTERS

The Public Renewables Project is a new organization run by 350 co-founder Jason Kowalski calling for publicly financed, publicly developed renewable energy:

“Our mission is to stand up a public renewable energy developer in all 50 states, to build the renewable energy that for-profit developers are currently not building. We work with labor unions, climate groups, grassroots organizations, and public finance experts to deploy public renewables in a way that reduces inequality and increases worker power.”

Public Renewables is launching with a new report, Public Option Solar for K-12 Schools, co-authored by Jeremy Liskar from Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project and Tish Tablan from Generation180, a cleantech advocacy group. The report details how the Connecticut Green Bank has successfully built 80 on-site solar-power projects at elementary schools across the state, leading to tens of millions of dollars in savings.

Public Renewables has a powerhouse team of green industrial policy experts. In addition to Kowalski, the group comprises Hebah Kassem, Isabel Estevez, former AOC chief of staff Gerardo Bonilla Chavez, and former White House advisor Ben Beachy.

And now, a message from today’s sponsor, the Center for Alignment of AI Alignment Centers:

Who aligns the aligners? Every day, thousands of researchers race to solve theAI alignment problem. But they struggle to coordinate on the basics, like whether a misaligned superintelligence will seek to destroy humanity, or just enslave and torture us forever. Who, then, aligns the aligners? We do. We are the world's first AI alignment alignment center, working to subsume the countless other AI centers, institutes, labs, initiatives and forums into one final AI center singularity.

The Republican war on science continues apace. Molly Taft did the dirty work of watching Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Jewish Space Lasers) “weather modification” hearing:

“A House Oversight Committee hearing produced a flood of bizarre claims about cloud seeding, chemtrails, and solar geoengineering. Proven, human-driven changes to the weather were dismissed.”

Fun fact: the first congressional hearing on weather modification took place in Las Vegas on November 5, 1965, as the National Academies of Science was putting together the report Weather and Climate Modification: Problems and Prospects.

WEATHER MODIFICATION FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1965 U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE. The committee met at 10 a.m. in the Safari Room (building 7), Hotel Sahara, Las Vegas, Nev., the Honorable Howard W. Cannon presiding. Senator CANNON. Gentlemen, the hearing will come to order. The Senate Commerce Committee today is beginning its formal hearing on S. 23, which would authorize a program in five arid areas of the United States to increase usable precipitation.

House Republicans are now arguing that the National Academies of Science produces thoughtcrime. Jeffrey Mervis writes for Science that “this month, two influential Republican-led congressional committees suggested that, after 162 years, federal agencies should stop listening to that august body”:

First the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the U.S. House of Representatives sharply questioned the impartiality of a NASEM study, scheduled to be released tomorrow, on whether anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions affect public health. That report addresses the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent decision to rescind a 2009 rule that treats carbon dioxide as a public health risk.

“The Committee is concerned that this study is being conducted with partisan aims” and that panel members “have also shown partisan bias,” its chair, Representative James Comer (R–Ky.), wrote in a 3 September letter to NAS President Marcia McNutt (former editor-in-chief of Science). Comer said NASEM also “appears to be fundraising off what it refers to as the ‘climate crisis,’ which raises additional questions about a predetermined outcome and conflicts of interest.”

A broader attack came on 10 September, from the House Committee on Appropriations. Its report accompanying a 2026 spending bill included a warning to all federal agencies “to use caution when entering into new agreements with NASEM and to consider alternative means for obtaining objective scientific review.” Without offering any details, the bill cites “the lack of objective nonpartisan research methods, including inaccurate references to data and removal of panel participants.”

I know that this bird is a lark, but can you tell me which type of lark it is? I saw this in the state of Maharashtra in India

At 10 am, the House Science energy subcommittee holds a hearing on fusion power with Oak Ridge director of fusion energy Troy Carter, University of Wisconsin fusion scientist Stephanie Diem, and industry representatives.

Hearings on the Hill:

The Center for Alignment of AI Alignment Centers is drawing attention to the alignment alignment crisis. Join their work today.

The Alignment Alignment Problem

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