“Some radical environmentalists and religious activists oppose Mr. Pruitt because he does not embrace their exaggerated fears of human-induced global warming—fears that go well beyond the empirical evidence crucial to genuine science—or their antipathy to the development of the abundant, reliable, affordable energy indispensable to lifting and keeping whole societies out of poverty and the disease and premature death that invariably accompany it.”

January 5, 2017

Dear President-elect Donald J. Trump:

We write to you as evangelical and mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish scientists, economists, legal scholars, policy experts, and religious leaders in support of your nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to the office of Administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA has the crucial task of writing and enforcing regulations that apply statutes passed by Congress and signed by the President to protect the life and health of Americans.…

“Enron, and no one more than Ken Lay, time and again pledged allegiance to free enterprise, deregulation, privatization, and competition. Come the implosion, that rhetoric was taken at face value. If Enron was capitalism, then capitalism was prone to flim-flam, deception, and even fraud.”

“Enron was a paragon of crony capitalism and a master of politicized regulation. Like no other company in history, Enron leveraged non-market government opportunity in myriad and sustained ways that ultimately came at the expense of consumers, taxpayers, and investors.”

“Classical liberals applauded the fact that the market, not regulators, exposed and ruined Enron. True enough, but the broader point and the deeper moral of the story is this: Enron and Ken Lay, as they were and became, would not have existed in a truly capitalistic economy.”

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 important articles in this issue are:

Crossroads III, Energy and Climate Policy Summit (DC: 12/8/16)

Trump and Science

Lomborg: Trump’s climate plan might not be so bad after all

What Trump Should Do with the Paris Treaty

Keep Science and Scientists Credible

Some Methodological Issues in Climate Science

Climate Model for Lawyers

The EPA Shows Again That It’s an Affront to Common Sense

2016 State of the Climate Report

Half Of Global Warming Alarmist Research Papers Might Be Wrong

Global Warming: Policy Hoax versus Dodgy Science

Satellite Data Reinstates Global Temperature Pause

100+ Scientific Papers From 2016 Link Solar Forcing To Climate Change

Wind Blown Away in Vermont

Time to Cut Our Losses on Big Wind

The Latest List of Turbine Accidents (now almost two thousand)

Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy Series: Part1, Part 2, Part 3.…

“Trump’s energy policies are my energy policies. Mission accomplished.”

 – Marita Noon, “My Work Here Is Finished,” November 14, 2016.

Marita Noon has been a talented voice in the energy debate during what will be remembered as a particularly dark era. She began by surviving New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson and outlasted Barack Obama at the end.

Interestingly, Marita started from scratch and learned all about energy at a time when there were very few of us working full time from a free market perspective. As a newcomer, she weighted the arguments on their merits and constantly asked: What is energy, why is it important, and why do citizens and voters care about energy?

Marita’s high energy level was something to behold–as in ‘turning your umbrella inside out’.  She spoke to common men and women throughout the industry at conferences, in print, and on the air.…