Governor Jerry Brown will visit the San Diego offices of Soitec this morning, and will give a speech around 10 a.m. The company, a French technology firm and manufacturer of photovoltaic solar panels, is dedicating its new solar production facility, which will serve as its North American solar headquarters, manufacture lens plates for solar modules, and employ approximately 450 San Diegans.

Brown’s remarks at the dedication may have some political charge to them. Yesterday morning during a climate change conference at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Brown had strong words for deniers of global warming and detractors of renewable energy.

“The main thing we have to deal with in climate change is the skepticism, the denial and the cult-like behavior of the political lemmings that would take us over the cliff,” Brown said. He went on to charge that climate change was responsible for extending California’s fire season and hastening its snowmelt, causing problems for the state’s central agricultural valleys and providing challenges to its infrastructure.