“Jeff Clark and the Austin-based Wind Coalition are working the red states hard to convince citizens, voters, and legislators that Big Wind is not only green but also red, white, and blue.

Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, fiscally concerned Democrats beware! Wind power is a solution looking for a problem and has nothing to do with the free market and limited, constitutional government.”

At a panel discussion of the future of windpower in Texas last week, hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Jeff Clark of the Wind Coalition made a “conservative” case for continuing government mandates and tax preferences for his industry.

The sold-out event was mostly attended by those favoring smaller government—and ready for a comeuppance for government-dependent windpower. The event was held in Austin, the home of TPPF and the Wind Coalition, an advocacy group focused on the south-central United States.…

“[Enron was] the company most responsible for sparking off the greenhouse civil war in the hydrocarbon business.”

– Jeremy Leggett, The Carbon War (London: Penguin Books, 1999), p. 204.

“The United States fully intends to be the world’s preeminent leader in protecting the global environment. [E]nvironmental protection makes growth sustainable…. [This] recognition … by leaders from around the world is the central accomplishment of this important [United Nations] Rio Conference.”

– George H. W. Bush, “News Conference in Rio de Janeiro, June 13, 1992.

The rise and fall of Enron Corp. is Exhibit A by government advocates for increasing regulation of what is seen as unbridled, market-failure-ridden capitalism. As one economics textbook states: “The story about Enron reminds us of a serious fact of economic life—that markets fail….”…

“The IPCC seems more intent on trying to maintain the now-dying consensus than in following climate science to its logical conclusion—a conclusion that increasingly suggests that human greenhouse gas emissions are less important in driving climate change than commonly held.”

Several weeks ago, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the climate science portion of its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). The AR5 is so burdened by fundamental flaws that it is worthless, or worse, misleading, as a resource to ground policy decisions regarding energy choices.

The IPCC seems to favor the output of computer climate models over that of hard observational science—science which indicates that computer models warm the earth’s temperature too fast for a given input of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Using climate models which are too sensitive to greenhouse gases leads to projections of future warming and all its resultant impacts—the meat of the IPCC report—which are too high.…