“Wind power’s growth is challenged because the best sites for windmills have already been exploited, the end-of-life mills are being torn down, subsidies are declining, and some of the enthusiasm for windmills departed with former DOE Secretary Dr. Chu. The new Secretary, Dr. Muniz, believes in solar.”

As most people are, I too am subjected daily to the mass media reports that broadcast the need for building renewable, clean energy sources. Those sources are usually identified as “wind, solar and others” followed by a hint at their rapidly increasing output.

Suspicious, I looked up the sources and their annual output as compiled by our Department of Energy (doe.eia.gov). The result are plotted in the two attached graphs. The upper one shows the “Other” sources, the lower one “wind and solar.”

Looking at the four sources in the upper graph, hydro, wood, waste and geothermal, there has not been a worthwhile upward trend in any of them for two decades.…