The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

Some of the more insightful articles in this issue are:

Position of Poland’s National Institute of Public on Industrial Wind

Wind Energy Sector Gets $176 Billion Worth of Crony Capitalism

Despite Huge Investments, Renewable Energy Isn’t Winning

Turbine Bat Killings Continue Unabated

Multiple Mortality Events in Bats: a Global Review

The UK’s SMR Competition

Denmark Cancels All Coastal Wind Projects

Wind Turbines Threaten Space Research

Peer-Reviewed Study: CO2 Cuts Could Impoverish the World

Peer-Reviewed Study: Positive Impact of Human CO2 Emissions

1500 Scientists Lift the Lid on Reproducibility

Global Warming Alarmists—You’re Doing it Wrong

Rebutting Climate Alarmism with Simple Facts

Science on the Verge

The Watermelons Are Coming

Greed Energy Economics:

Wind Energy Sector Gets $176 Billion Worth of Crony Capitalism

Despite Huge Investments, Renewable Energy Isn’t Winning

US Senate Finance Committee Energy Hearing Testimony

The revealing numbers on solar employment in the USA

DOE Withdraws $40 Million from VA Offshore Wind Project

Germany Moves to Slow its Out-of-Control Energiewende

Wind Energy PILOT Programs are a Shell Game

Renewable Energy Health Matters:

VT Gov vetoes wind energy bill designed to provide health protections

Position of Poland’s National Institute of Public on industrial wind

Poland Adopts 10x Setback Rule for Wind Turbines

7 Short Videos to Clear Up Myths about Air Pollution

Renewable Energy Destroying Ecosystems:

Turbine Bat Killings Continue Unabated

Multiple mortality events in bats: a global review

Turtles Topple Turbines

Open for Comments: NOAA’s Draft of Ocean Noise Rules

Miscellaneous Energy News:

Wind Turbines Threaten Space Research

The UK’s SMR Competition

Denmark Cancels All Coastal Wind Projects

Study: Empirically-constrained climate sensitivity and the social cost of carbon

Study: Solar PV is a net energy loser

Who Wants Wind Turbines?…

Twenty years ago, Rob Bradley, then president and now CEO of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), published a two-volume, two-thousand-page history of hydrocarbon regulation, legislation, economics, and politics from the mid-1800s to the mid-1980s. Titled Oil, Gas & Government: The U.S. Experience, Bradley’s treatise puts many of today’s energy issues in historical context.

On April 1, 1996, I wrote about the book in the newsletter I founded and edited, Natural Gas Week. I started my column, dubbed Perspective, by quoting philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Today, 20 years later, I would urge current legislators and regulators to consider the main takeaways of Bradley’s book before casting another vote or initialing another regulatory memo.

In his book, Bradley said that political motivations for government intervention are “narrow and self-interested, not necessarily in the common good and not necessarily representative of the citizenry.”…

“Citing the iconic U.S. inventor and businessman Thomas Edison, who is credited for building the first modern power station on lower Manhattan’s Pearl Street in 1892, [Secretary of State John] Kerry said Edison would view today’s deployment of clean energy technology as evidence that ‘an energy revolution that he dreamt about is actually underway’.”

– Daniel Cusick, “Kerry Decries ‘Politics, Sheer Politics’ of Climate Denial,” ClimateWire, April 6, 2016.

John Kerry probably has a speechwriter. And that speechwriter is no doubt trying to come up with some new angle to make an energy/climate point for the boss.

But if Kerry thinks that Edison was dreaming about wind and solar to generate (intermittent) electricity, I would at least like to know about the source. The dreaming might have been speechwriter/Kerry for Thomas Edison, not Thomas Edison for speechwriter/Kerry.…

“If good and evil are measured by the standard of human well-being and human progress, we must conclude that the fossil fuel industry is not a necessary evil to be restricted but a superior good to be liberated.”

“We don’t need green energy–we need humanitarian energy.”

“The 2016 election presents us with a once-in-a-lifetime energy opportunity–and energy danger. There is no middle ground. There can be no more standing down. It’s time to stand up.”

– Alex Epstein, “At CERAWeek Fossil Fuel Leaders Should Make A Moral Case For Their Industry,” Forbes.com., February 18, 2016.

For many years, make that decades, I have noted Daniel Yergin’s political bias at the annual CERA conference here in Houston. Nonindustry speakers have routinely been climate alarmists and anti-fossil fuel proponents, picked from both the government and the nonprofit sector.…