This post excerpts energy and climate material from the Media Balance Newsletter, a free fortnightly published by physicist John Droz Jr., founder of the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions. The complete Newsletter for this post can be found here.
Unreliables: Energy Health and Ecosystem Consequences:
*** The loss of pollinators: The hidden ecological cost of Wind Turbines
Unreliables (General):
*** Introducing The Global Renewable Rejection Database: At Least 72 Rejections Of Wind/Solar Since 2023
Trump Drops Truth Bomb On Green Energy
A Key Federal Agency Stopped Approving New Renewables Projects
Wind Energy — Offshore:
*** Elon, it’s time to sic the DOGE on BOEM
*** The Collapse of Offshore Wind Power is Only the Beginning
Deficiencies in Dominion’s offshore wind permits
Opposition Grows to Offshore Lake Erie Wind Turbines
Media outlet is reporting possible data falsification at plant where defective Vineyard Wind turbine blades were manufactured
Wind Energy — Other:
*** Big Wind is in big trouble
GE closing wind blade factory with 1,000 jobs to go
Solar Energy:
Energy experts blast failed billion-dollar DOE solar project as ‘financial boondoggle,’ ‘disaster’
The Ivanpah Solar Power Monstrosity Bites the Taxpayers.…
Ed. Note: Four years ago, Storm Uri caused Texas’s centrally planned wholesale electricity market (ERCOT) to buckle, vindicating warnings about the state’s wind/solar reliance. The mainstream media implicated natural gas instead, failing to explore the why behind the why. Rather than deregulation, Texas has chosen to add wind, solar, and batteries, while subsidizing natural gas plants to counter intermittency. This duplicated grid is now driving rates up in a state that could have relied on surplus natural gas instead.
It was not so much the story of freak weather triggering a market failure writ large. It was a classic application of the political economy of government intervention: the seen and the unseen, expert/regulatory failure, and unintended consequences.
Don Lavoie, a preeminent thinker in the field of market-versus-government planning, once warned:
…If the guiding agency is less knowledgeable than the system it is trying to guide—and even worse, if its actions necessarily result in further undesired consequences in the working of that system—then what is going on is not planning at all but, rather, blind interference by some agents with the plans of others.”
“I will debate you on the condition that we hold the debate in the form of a WWE professional wrestling match, because that’s about as seriously as I take you.” (- Benjamin Leffel to author, below)
Benjamin Leffel, Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy and Leadership, University of Nevada Las Vegas, posted on LinkedIn (with this link to Science magazine).
Dear foundations and philanthropies:
Thousands of high-impact research grant proposals are being pressured to change their language for fear of angering the Trump regime. Many researchers will be looking to foundations instead of federal sources like NSF as a result. Now is your time to shine.
I commented on his post:
…Yes! End federal grants and spare the taxpayer! Climate scientists should be more amenable to doing controversial projects that are less alarmist or even pro-CO2.