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. Droz is also the author of the popular Substack Critically Thinking About Select Societal Issues.

Unreliables (General):
*** Grid Instability
Geopolitical Reality Has Ended the Rush to Renewables
The Renewable Data Center Fantasy
New York’s New Solar Religion is Absolutely Devastating to Wildlife, Farmland

Nuclear Energy:
America is Watching the World’s Movement to Nuclear Power Generation
Billion-dollar machine aims to set a fusion-energy record — and study nuclear weapons

Fossil Fuel Energy:
*** Trump announces ‘biggest oil deal in world history,’ says it will substantially lower gas prices
*** Why Gasoline Costs More in Democratic-Controlled States
Trump administration to pay German firm to halt US wind projects – and ‘re-invest’ in gas schemes
Yes, Coal Clearly Has A Future

Electric Vehicles (EVs):
They were told to park outside – then their cars burst into flames

Miscellaneous Energy News:
*** Shockingly vulnerable US power grid could result in 18-month nationwide blackout, expert warns
*** Energy War: Iran, China, AI and the fight to control the future
*** A sort talk: Meredith Angwin and the Two Grids in the Hudson Valley
Battery System Capital & Operating Costs, Energy Losses and Aging
Hydrogen: Not Market Ready

Manmade Global Warming — Miscellaneous:
*** Climate ‘Experts’ Are 0-54 with Their Doomsday Predictions
*** Climatologist Says a Century of Weather Data Contradicts Claims of Record Heat
*** Net Zero Won’t Fix Climate Change.…

“Wrong, Roger Hallam. Weather is not climate change. Your professors at Kings College–did any question climate models and explain the benefits of CO2 enrichment and, yes, of warmer temperatures (think winters and nights)?”

The Climate Industrial Complex, the companies and their nonprofit allies, are flexing toward the middle. It is all about money and power, less about real human welfare re “saving the planet.’

This inconvenient truth has the true believers upset. Consider the latest from Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, where he works full-time:

Another disastrously pathetic response from “environmental campaigners” – who cares about the bloody “green new deal”. What needs to be communicated is that unless there is a drastic reduction in emissions – and that means including zero car emissions by 2030 – Europeans are going to starve to death.

“To turn the noun ‘resources’ into the verb ‘resourcing,’ to discard entirely the notion of a resource ‘glass’ that is somewhere between full and empty, requires one more analytic step—a step that Zimmermann failed to take.”

In 1972, just two years after the first Earth Day, a team of scholars from MIT published a 200-page book called The Limits to Growth. Using the emerging instrument of computer models, they created a worldwide stir by suggesting that science had now put numbers to a few self-evident truths. Non-renewable resources are fixed; the consumption of such resources must eventually end; any civilization based on such consumption must collapse. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis called the work “likely to be one of the most important documents of our age” (January 28, 1972).

Of course, the scholars acknowledged that they were dealing with variables.…

“New Mexico has one of the highest poverty rates in the country. Higher energy prices are in effect a regressive tax that places low-income households in the state in peril.”

Energy policies that originate from a political or quasi-religious agenda—propelled by climate zealots, misinformation, and obliviousness to basic economic principles—are on trial in the new political environment. Such policies sacrifice the public good to benefit special interests wed to rent-seeking.

While this commentary focuses on New Mexico, its urgings are applicable to other jurisdictions that currently have or are considering government-driven energy policies featuring mandates and subsidies that encourage consumers to transition away from fossil fuels. 

Three Hard Truths

Three truths should determine energy policy in New Mexico.

1. No climate benefit. Whatever action the state takes to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has a negligible effect on climate change. …