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:
Battle Looms Among NY Democrats Over High Cost of Green Energy Plans

Renewable Energy Health and Ecosystem Consequences:
Three bat species at risk of becoming endangered as wind turbines take heavy toll on wildlife
New Study: Bat Mortality in Wind Facilities of Southern Europe: Temporal Patterns and Implications in the Current Context of Climate Change

Renewables (General):
*** EPA v. The Grid
*** The wind and solar power myth has finally been exposed
*** Causal Effects
*** Wind and Solar Aren’t Nearly Enough: Why Biden Is Suddenly Supporting Fossil Fuels
There Is No Green “Energy Transition”
Oxford University’s Our World in Data falls for renewables industry spin

Wind Energy — Offshore:
*** The Left claims offshore wind costs are “benefits”
*** US Lawsuits filed against Offshore Wind Projects
R.I.…

“You really not have addressed my criticisms about your accepting, at face value, climate alarmism, forced energy transformation, and a technocratic solution to the current grid problems brought on by the wind/solar takeover.” (Bradley to Kiesling, below)

“You clearly disagree with my synthetic theory of regulation and technological change. I synthesize institutional and transaction cost economics, Schumpeterian innovation economics, economic history, public choice, and yes, Austrian economics….. I think this theory … does a better job of helping us understand the institutional and organizational, and technological, reality of what’s feasible in liberalizing the electricity industry and its regulation.” (Kiesling to Bradley, below)

More than a century of increasing government intervention has created today’s crisis in electricity. It is not only a crisis of performance (affordability, reliability). It is a crisis where the cumulative interventionist process is now coming to your home or business.…

“For the foregoing reasons, we respectfully make the following two requests: First that NOAA/Fisheries reopen the public comment period on the CVOW request for an LOA. Second, that NOAA/Fisheries neither consider nor approve the LOA until after the entire NEPA process is concluded and a ROD is issued for the project. Should NOAA/Fisheries deny either of our requests, we will initiate legal action.”

There is an old joke: “When is an environmentalist not an environmentalist?” Answer: “When it comes to Industrial Wind Turbines.” …

I was reminded of this upon reading a respectful, firm letter from the legal council representing free-market organizations to Jolie Harrison, Chief Permits and Conservation Division, Office of Protected Resources, National Marine Fisheries Service. The matter is in regard to Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Commercial Project – Dominion Application for Letter of Authorization to Take Small Numbers of Marine Mammals, the latest salvo being

a request from the Virginia Electric and Power Company, doing business as Dominion Energy Virginia (Dominion Energy), for Incidental Take Regulations (ITR) and an associated Letter of Authorization (LOA) pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) [for] … authorization of take, by Level A harassment and Level B harassment, of small numbers of marine mammals over the course of 5 years (2024–2029) incidental to construction of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Commercial (CVOW–C) project offshore of Virginia … and associated Export Cable Routes.

“As of mid-March 2023, NOAA Fisheries has handed out 15 marine mammal Incidental Take Authorizations (ITAs) to offshore wind projects from NC to MA. These will allow companies to ‘take’ 111,817 whales, dolphins and seals. The harassment, injury, and killing of marine mammals are referred to as ‘takes’.”

Let the debate continue on the cause of the recent surge of whale deaths in the vicinity of several wind farms off the northeastern coast. But note the case of such a causal relationship, which appears to be growing, not receding.

Consider this letter from a local citizen in the local newspaper, EastBayRI (May 10, 2023), “‘Take’ authorizations prove NOAA is lying about whale deaths:

The marine science community knows this much for certain: The high-resolution geophysical (HRG) surveys used to site offshore wind turbines and transmission cabling causes harm and mortality to marine mammals.…