“A consortium of grant seekers, organized under the name ‘Aqua Ventus,’ vies for $40 million in Department of Energy grants to build a demonstration wind project within three miles of Monhegan Island. They do so under the higher moral purpose of saving the planet, but that is simply to camouflage what is but a callous quest for ‘free’ government money, taxpayers and ratepayers be damned.”

Will the new, improved US Department of Energy (DOE) just-say-no to a massively uneconomic proposed wind project offshore?

I call your attention to a situation in Maine which I believe is a poster child for how the forgotten American is being robbed and disrespected by the renewable-energy special interests and their coterie of shills. The issue is this: DOE is presently considering grants of $40 million for a project which would never exist absent tax-and-spend government largesse to this point.…

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).

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

Some of the more important articles in this issue are:

Is Global Warming Just a Fraud?

Many meteorologists question climate change science

Climate Orthodoxy — The Limits of Professional Judgment

Major Study about the limitations of climate models

Study: A Host of Problems Associated with CMIP3 and 5 Climate Models

Cabinet Science-Denial or Scientific Skepticism?…

“Toshiba’s nuclear business has been hemorrhaging money at its U.S. construction projects in Georgia and South Carolina…. The four units are in states with regulated markets and provisions for nuclear projects to receive a return on their capital investments during construction, through consumer electric rate increases.”

The social value of nuclear power may provoke wide debate. But as a business proposition, in countries with market-based economies, nuclear is failing. New construction is particularly disappointing: a new generation of technology widely expected to get costs and construction times down simply has not done so.

Problems at Toshiba

The latest evidence comes Toshiba, a giant Japanese conglomerate and parent of the U.S. nuclear reactor designer and vendor, Westinghouse Electric. Westinghouse’s ruinous investment in nuclear construction behemoth CB&I Stone & Webster has crippled Toshiba’s finances.…

Rapid industrialization spilled pollution across China’s cities, rivers, and skies. Market-reforms in the 1980s opened first agriculture and Special Economic Zones (SEZs) like Shenzhen to local enterprise and overseas investors. Market reforms and factories then expanded across China, bringing prosperity but also pollution from mining and manufacturing. Through the first decades of reform, pollution seemed far less important than jobs when wage rates even in 1990 yielded an average income per person (GNI) of just $330 a year. By 2000, average income had nearly tripled but was still just $940 a year, and by 2015, average income was nearly eight times higher than that–$7,930.

Hundreds of millions migrated from rural China to new assembly plants and textile mills. An estimated 200 million migrant workers still form the “floating population” of informal labor.…