Ed. Note: This post excerpts energy and climate material from the Media Balance Newsletter, a free fortnighly 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:
*** Don’t believe the renewables myth: Wind and Solar are not cheap
Chinese manufacturers dominate wind power, taking 60% of global market

Unreliables: Energy Health and Ecosystem Consequences:
*** Video: Assoc Prof Simon Michaux – The quantity of metals required to manufacture just one generation of renewables
*** Carnage of Child Labor and Ecological Destruction Elsewhere acceptable to Wealthy Countries

Unreliables (General):
*** Residents vs Town Council re Solar and Wind Facilities
*** Green Breakdown—The Coming Renewable Energy Failure
*** The Grid as an Energy Weapon — Massive Lithium Storage Centers Spread
*** The Prophet of Power Density
*** There is no green ‘transition’ to renewable energy.…

“The border tax adjustment would be hugely complex given the international supply-chain system, leading to an increase in the attendant bureaucracy even if the regulatory bureaucracy is reduced in size.”

“The CLC proposal is poor conceptually and deeply unserious.”

Six years ago, economist Ben Zycher, the John Searle chair at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), published an analysis that rings true today–if not more true. “The Deeply-Flawed Conservative Case for a Carbon Tax,” subtitled “’Conservatives’ Endorse the Broken-Windows Fallacy, Reject Evidence and Rigor,” outlined the arguments that once-proud Resources for the Future would not.

Zycher’s piece employed Economics 101 to refute a proposal from the Climate Leadership Council, the Baker-Shultz ‘Carbon Dividends Plan’, that attempted to fool Republicans and conservatives that carbon dioxide (CO2) was a pollutant that the U.S.…

“Failures of wind and solar during severe weather events are a problem, but a larger problem is that failures are not confined to severe winter storms. In fact, these failures occur on a daily and even hourly basis. During the summer months, wind tends to die down in the afternoons, causing large drops in wind-generated electricity. Later afternoon rain storms can reduce solar generation significantly.”

Texas is blessed with mineral and natural resources. Texas is the largest crude oil and natural gas producer in the US. It would be the world’s 4th largest producer if Texas were a country.

For reasons of politics and government intervention over a quarter-century, Texas is the largest wind power producer and second-largest solar producer in the U.S. and will likely surpass California, the leading solar power state, within a year.…

“The historic trends contradict the conventional view that fossil generation has been declining, while renewables are gaining. According to the data, ‘The share of low carbon fuels (nuclear, hydro, wind & solar) peaked at 36% in 1995, coinciding with COP1 [the first UN conference of parties].'”

In the worldwide battle for electric generation, coal isn’t down and out. It isn’t even on the ropes. According to World Energy Data (formerly BP’s data collection report), coal is still the champ.

In 2022, coal accounted for 35.4% of global electric generation, followed by natural gas (22.7%), hydro (14.9%), nuclear (9.2%), wind (7.2%), solar (4.5%), geothermal, biomass, and other renewables (3.6%).

The historic trends contradict the conventional view that fossil generation has been declining, while renewables are gaining. According to the data, “The share of low carbon fuels (nuclear, hydro, wind & solar) peaked at 36% in 1995, coinciding with COP1 [the first UN conference of parties].”…