The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy & environmental policies. Our basic position is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science. It’s all spelled out at WiseEnergy.org, which is a wealth of energy and environmental resources.

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every 3 weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and environmental matters. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

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Greed Energy Economics:

As Hawaii Prepares for Utility Reform, the State’s Solar Industry Sheds 3,000 Workers

The Dumb Ways We Subsidize Renewable Energy

Paying wind developers to not produce electricity, etc.…

“But while the IPCC chooses to look the other way, the scientific evidence supporting low equilibrium climate sensitivity continues to pile up…. This is all around good news, for it means that we can focus more on expanding energy access (via fossil fuels) around the world rather than curtail our energy growth.”

There are basically three key parameters that determine the pace and magnitude of future climate change: 1) how much carbon are we going to emit, 2) what percentage of those emissions will remain in the atmosphere (as opposed to being taken up by the biosphere), and 3) how much will the climate warm as a result of what remains in the atmosphere. We understand these things a lot better than we often let on.

The first parameter seems difficult to assess on timescales that exceed a couple of decades.…

“A groundbreaking gathering of the most acclaimed thinkers, scholars, and policymakers on our historic energy revolution, the global prosperity it will produce, and the federal policy that threatens it.”

Date: September 25/26, 2014

Place: Hyatt Regency Houston

Contact: REGISTER NOW

Kudos to the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) for hosting a state-of-the-art climate and energy conference in the nation’s energy capital. The global warming establishment, including many government-grant-dependent local university professors, may stay away. But open-minded Houstonians and visitors will get a multi-disciplinary dose of sound physical science, political economy, and resource economics at this two-day event.

TPPF describes the conference as follows:

At the Crossroads is a unique gathering of the world’s foremost experts, brought together to analyze the historical crossroads at which our county sits. The burgeoning opportunities flowing from the energy revolution are now directly threatened by federal regulatory mandates to displace coal, oil, natural gas. 

“Events are spiraling down so rapidly that I struggle to sleep…. Ironically, environmental groups’ insistence that renewables are the only alternative to fossil fuels actually assures expansion of fracking, locking in long-term dependence on gas for electricity, and crude oil for vehicles.”

– James Hansen, “The Energy to Fight Injustice,” August 20, 2014.

James Hansen is “nauseous” about Beijing’s “impenetrable smog”—fair enough. China needs to use off-the-shelf technology to clean up its their coal fleet, one plant at a time (as done in the U.S.).

Hansen is “troubled” about “the injustice” of climate change—highly debatable. The doctor’s own prognostications about global warming have been falsified and again (along with many others). [1] The warming of the 1990s was due to natural factors, not only anthropogenic ones, the latest science suggests.…