“But the truth is that Ohio’s renewable energy mandates have largely benefited only one group: entrenched monopoly fossil utilities like AEP, Iberdrola, and corporate behemoths like GE.”

Senate Bill 310’s attempt to freeze Ohio’s renewable energy mandate has elicited the typical partisan howls from Ohio’s green energy profiteers. They have been quick to paint the supporters of SB310 as slavish supporters of the much maligned Koch Brothers, FirstEnergy or other “dark fossil corporate profiteers”.

Curiously, these environmental group’s normally exquisitely tuned “corporate conspiracy radar” appears to have developed a massive wind-turbine-sized blind spot.

Consider:

• In 1998 it was Enron’s Ken Lay who  implored George W. Bush to extend subsidies for wind energy.  A quick scan of his letter reveals talking points that today could easily be mistaken for the Ohio Sierra Club: “Wind is the fastest growing new electrical generation technology in the world today and has rapidly decreased its production costs until it is close to being competitive with conventional generation technologies.”

“Indeed, a case could be made that politicians have been pushed into a situation such that they have no choice but to approve continued coal-burning, hydro-fracking for increased gas and oil production, and pursuit of oil and gas in extreme and pristine environments.” (James Hansen)

“I am saying that the global energy discussion should be based on facts, not on myths.” (James Hansen)

Yesterday’s post on James Hansen’s new analysis, “Renewable Energy, Nuclear Power and Galileo: Do Scientists Have a Duty to Expose Popular Misconceptions?, discussed how the anti-nuclear, pro-wind strategy of mainstream environmentalism works to increase, not decrease, greenhouse-gas emissions. Such an incredible irony can only be blamed on philosophical fraud, of believing in imaging and emotions rather than reality. [1]

Hansen’s article also speaks energy/political truth to Big Environmentalism in other ways that help steer the energy debate towards realism and away from postmodernism.…

On December 26, 2008, the free-market energy blog MasterResource began. Some 1,440 posts (from 150 authors) later, we are nearing two million views.

The original idea of MasterResource was to bring a distinguished group of energy experts together to attract a wider audience. The thinking was that a movement website would provide the critical mass to be heard in an increasingly crowded blogosphere.

Here was the original concept as explained in our first blog five years ago today:

We are just getting started here, but some of us veterans of the energy debate from a private property, free-market perspective have teamed together to offer our thoughts on late breaking energy items. When I read my newspapers each day, I have some thoughts that I wish I could share with folks from a historical, worldview perspective.

 “I have no idea who Jim Wiegand is, but the Master Resource website is highly questionable….”

“Jim: My apologies. I was overreacting…. Perhaps you would be better served if you avoided that [MasterResource] crowd.”

So said Elliott Negin, Director of News & Commentary at the Union of Concerned Scientists, several days ago in the comments section of his Huffington Post  piece, Wind Energy Threat to Birds Is Overblown.”

Mr. Negin is a serial user of the argumentum ad hominem. The Free Dictionary defines ad hominem as: “Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason: Debaters should avoid ad hominem arguments that question their opponents’ motives.”

In his piece, Negin takes on journalist and scholar Robert Bryce, whose exposés of politically correct renewable energy have clearly stuck a nerve with mainstream environmentalists whose embrace of industrial windpower is problematic.…