“But nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” (Milton and Rose Friedman, Tyranny of the Status Quo, 1983, p. 115)

“The infant industry argument is a smoke screen. The so-called infants never grow up.” (Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose, 1979, p. 49)

What was said in a previous post regarding wind power’s 14 extensions of the Production Tax Credit also applies to solar power’s Investment Tax Credit (ITC) and its preceding tax favors. From 1978 to the present (46 years), 15 extensions belie the industry’s age-old claims of almost being competitive. Remember the New York Times’ declaration in 1994 (per Enron) that solar was “competitive” with fossil fuels? Remember Solyndra? Joe Romm in 2011: “It is clear that solar and wind are competitive in many situations right now.”…

“But nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program,” Milton and Rose Friedman wrote in their 1983 primer, Tyranny of the Status Quo. And regarding government help for a developing business? “The infant industry argument is a smoke screen,” the husband-and-wife team observed. “The so-called infants never grow up.”

Industrial wind power is certainly not an infant industry, having been demonstrated as grid electricity in the nineteenth century and again during World War II. [1] But it is dilute and intermittent, fatal qualities as against fossil-fuel generated electricity.

And so although the wind interests have claimed competitiveness (actual or impending) since the 1980s, and received a lifeline subsidy in 1992 (below), the U.S. industrial wind industry is as dependent on government largesse as ever.…

“Back to Lindsey Gulden, the self-described Data/Climate Scientist. She would/could not provide a time series example to back up any part of her claim of ‘global climate to go off the rails’ … ‘more extreme events’. I asked her repeatedly for data, and she could only sign-off with ‘I made no such claim‘.”

On LinkedIn, Saul Humphrey stated: 2023 was the hottest year on record and 2024 is threatening to be hotter still.  Humphrey then quotes from an article in The Independent, “Do the People Care About the Climate Crisis? These Voters Say Yes – but Polls Do Not” (April 19, 2024):

In the US 🇺🇸 wildfires destroyed more than 1.7 million acres in the first three months of 2024, already half of last year’s total, and forecasters expect an unprecedented number of Atlantic hurricanes.

“Wind and solar pose inherent problems; especially to the ultra-high electric energy ‘purity’ requirements of AI/data centers. Data centers and AI generally require nine-nines reliability and quality metrics such as voltage, frequency, harmonics, etc.”

Several recent articles have highlighted that artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers are increasing electricity usage, creating concern about adequate supply and its effect on local communities. These articles include:

• Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power

The nation’s 2,700 data centers sapped more than 4 percent of the country’s total electricity in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency. Its projections show that by 2026, they will consume 6 percent.

• Newmark: US data center power consumption to double by 2030

While the hyperscalers typically need 10-14kW per rack in existing data centers, this is likely to rise to 40-60kW for AI-ready racks equipped with resource-hungry GPUs.