There was shock, surprise, and humor in the media when Trump not only denounced wind “mills” for intermittency, lack of predictable value, property losses, and bird kills but also topped his discussion with

“They say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one, okay?”

Is President Trump correct in his five critical points? Even the last one? Or is it possible, as Trevor Noah suggested, turbines might be the only things that don’t cause cancer.

1. Intermittency

Electricity must be consumed the moment it is produced. Storage to allow deviations is prohibitively expensive in all but the rarest of settings. And it has always been this way.

Trump said, “Honey I’d like to watch TV tonight: are the turbines working?” And then his quotation from the Washington Republican fundraiser:

“Is the wind blowing?…

“The Trump folks seem to believe that anything that has Obama’s fingerprints on it, no matter how sensible, they’re going to rescind, revoke and demolish, and it makes no sense at all.”

“[The climate conundrum] is scary and I’m not sure we’re gonna be able to turn it around.”

– John Holdren, December 2017.

This is Part II of a transcribed interview with John Holdren, leader of the energy/climate Malthusian school, by Climate One. Yesterday’s post critically assessed Holdren’s views on federal energy research and development, the Paris withdrawal, and China’s energy policy. Today’s post looks at his views on most other issues in the “energy sustainability” debate.

Holdren quotations are below in red, followed by my rebuttal comments indented in black (subtitles added).

Technology Boom in Renewable Energies

“… there have been huge improvement in battery technology.…

“The private sector will never do the amount of fundamental research that society’s interests require because you cannot tell in advance the nature of fundamental research…. The companies can’t tell whether there’ll ever be any return.”

– John Holdren, December 2017 Interview.

Less than one year ago, John Holdren, Obama’s beginning-to-end science adviser, and now Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, spoke of his concerns about Trump energy policy in a Climate One podcast from San Francisco.

Holdren quotations are below in red, followed by my rebuttal comments indented in black (subtitles added):

Government R&D as Savior

Holdren: “Well I think the biggest damage that the Trump administration is doing is first of all reducing or proposing to reduce very drastically investments in clean and efficient energy research and development by the government.…

” … [Alan] Krupnick pointed out that economic realities and state regulations may frustrate the administration’s efforts to boost fossil fuel production….”

So reads one highlight from the 2017 annual report of Resources for the Future (RFF), where wish and want are prone to color the opinions and technical analysis of the richly funded organization’s bevy of PhD economists.

Seen another way, do not expect key scientific and economic terms in the energy debate to appear in this annual report. Government failure–the very term that goes alongside market failure? It’s missing. Unintended consequences of government intervention? Not there. Global greening from carbon dioxide emissions/concentrations? No way. Global lukewarming re the growing gulf between model-predicted and recorded global temperatures? Not a hint of that.

RFF’s common denominator? Assume, don’t debate, fundamental questions that conflict with the funding agenda of problematic climate change.…