[Editor note: Robert Bryce, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, is a leading researcher and disseminator of the problems of ‘green’ energy. His February 25, 2014, testimony before the Senate Committee on the Environmental and Public Works follows today and tomorrow.]

The focus of this hearing is on the economic benefits of ecosystems and wildlife and how they “are valuable to a wide range of industries,” including tourism. The purpose is also to examine “how the Administration is preparing to protect” ecosystems “in a changing climate.” The facts show that federally subsidized efforts that are being undertaken to, in theory, address climate change, are damaging America’s wildlife.

Furthermore, those same efforts have, for years, been allowing an entire industry to avoid federal prosecution under some of America’s oldest wildlife laws.…

“Projections show that wind generation will increase rapidly to approximately 6,250 MW by 2013.  This vast amount of wind power interconnected to the Bonneville Power Administration’s transmission grid will likely overwhelm the existing federal hydropower system’s ability to provide sufficient integration services in the future….

As the percentage of wind generation grows, the risk of having a major system event from an unpredicted change of the wind energy level increases.”

– Technical Analysis of Pumped Storage Integration with Wind Power in the Pacific Northwest – Final Report, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (August 2009).

The magnitude and location of the current unfolding story of a large crack in the hydro-rich Wanapum Dam on the Columbia River in Central Washington became known only a week after the Grant County Public Utility District declared a potential emergency. …

“Recent events have been spiraling down so rapidly that I find it hard to sleep. Ex-President Clinton campaigns for a huge pipeline to carry Canadian tar sands…. Dogged insistence by environmental groups that intermittent renewable energies are the only alternative to fossil fuels.…”

Writing from China earlier this week, and no doubt preparing his testimony for Thursday’s “Keystone XL and the National Interest Determination” hearing in Washington before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, climate scientist/policy activist James Hansen has once again laid bare the internal contradictions of Big Green’s codependency on dilute ‘green’.

In his missive Sleepless in Ningbo, Dr. Hansen described how the Chinese authorities during a tour of the country’s renewable projects gave him some sobering news. China’s energy pie is divided into 78% coal, 12% gas, 7% oil, and 3% renewables.…

 “The Master Resource people are whores of the fossil fuel industry. (Yes, that certainly includes you.)”

– David Appell (@davidappell) | March 5, 2014 at 10:33 pm |

Judith Curry at Climate, Etc. posted about a new analysis by Nic Lewis and Marcel Crok, “A sensitive matter:  How the IPCC buried evidence showing good news about global warming” (Global Warming Policy Foundation: press release here; short version here), for which she wrote an introduction (see Appendix B below).

Several hundred comments followed. A critical, emotive thread of comments toward Lewis/Crok, and by implication Curry, was coming from David Appell, a highly credentialed journalist with a widely read blog, Quark Soup, that focuses on climate issues from an alarmist perspective.

I noticed this comment from Dr. Appell in response to pokerguy (aka al neipris) | March 5, 2014 at 7:16 pm who argued that at lower climate sensitivity, the external effects would “more likely … be overwhelmingly positive in its effect.”…