Ed. Note: 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.

Greed Energy Economics:
*** The “cheap wind power” myth is blown away
Traders in CO2 Credits Saddled With Vast Stranded-Asset Pile
Economic Suicide: Germany Passes Green Heating Law Mandating 65% Renewable Energy

Unreliables (General):
*** Giant utility rejects net zero power, big fight follows
*** ACEEE says heavy industry should become intermittent
*** Growing Maze of State and Local Laws Challenging Biden’s Energy Push
In the Wonderland of Wind and Solar, Down Can Be Up
Devastating risks of transitioning to ‘green’ energy

Wind Energy — Offshore:
*** Endangered Whales Unprotected with Wind Industry in Violation of Sonar Limits, New Research Finds
*** Why won’t Greenpeace admit that wind turbines may be killing whales?…

“Texas problem with wind and solar generation has been growing for years. In 2022, wind farms generated 25% of the electricity used in ERCOT. Solar farms generated 5.65%. Ten years earlier, wind’s market share was 12.25% and solar’s 0.03%. This has placed a great strain on the grid because neither of these generation sources can be counted on when needed.

Source: Reuters

Reuters recently ran a story highlighting wind generation’s failure through the early months of 2023:

The Texas power grid operator urged homes and businesses to conserve electricity on Tuesday as the first major heat wave of the season spurs residents to crank power-hungry air conditioners. Power prices for Tuesday topped $2,500 per megawatt hour (MWh) in the state’s day-ahead market on expectations that demand would reach record levels later in the day, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).

“As for using proxy data to detect a man-made greenhouse effect, I don’t think we’re ever going to get to the point where we’re going to be totally convincing.” – Thomas Wigley, National Center for Atmospheric Research, (April 28, 1998)

When did the “greenhouse signal” become recognized and “settled science”? Despite the 35th anniversary of James Hansen’s June 1988 testimony to a Senate subcommittee, the historical record should be clear that detection was not in 1988. Or 1991. Or 1995. Or 1998.

And “Exxon Knew“?

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Here is some history from the used-to-be newspaper of record, the New York Times, and its global warming scribe, William K. Stevens.

In early 1991, Stevens reported that scientists were not ready to pronounce evidence of man-made global warming: 

most scientists are far from ready to announce that greenhouse warming has arrived, since the warming recorded over the last decade could also be part of a natural climatic change.

“There are substantial environmental, technical, and cost challenges in using carbon dioxide removal (CDR) at the scale needed to significantly reduce global warming…. [that make it] unlikely that CDR could be implemented rapidly enough or at sufficient scale to entirely avoid dangerous levels of climate warming in the near term.” (Pro, public letter, February 27, 2023)

“The speculative possibility of future solar geoengineering risks becoming a powerful argument for industry lobbyists, climate denialists, and some governments to delay decarbonization policies.” (Con, open letter: January 17, 2022)

It is hard, contradictory, and hypocritical to be “green” as conventionally defined. I am reminded of a comment in the 1970s that noted “a general frustration generated by the energy crisis: every solution to the problem seems to create tremendous problems of its own.”…