What’s been happening recently in North Carolina (NC) is a microcosm of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) story: politics versus science, ad-hominems versus journalism, evangelists versus pragmatists, etc.

The contentiousness is over one of the main AGW battlefields: sea-level rise (SLR). North Carolina happens to have a large amount of coastline and has become the U.S. epicenter for this issue.

Background

The brief version is that this began several years ago when a state agency, the Coastal Resources Commission (CRC), selected a 20± member “science panel” to do a scientific assessment of the NC SLR situation through 2100. This could have been a very useful project if there had been balance in the personnel selections, and the panel’s assessment adhered to scientific standards. Regrettably, neither happened and the project soon jumped the rails, landing in the political agenda ditch.…

No Jay Leno this year at the annual confab of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). Instead of celebration and jokes (all at the expense of taxpayers and ratepayers), there is doom and gloom.

Bill Opalka reports at EnergyBiz:

Failure to extend the production tax credit would devastate the domestic wind energy supply chain and virtually wipe out wind power development next year, officials stressed during the June 4 opening of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) annual conference in Atlanta.

But the public is catching on to the industrial wind ruse.  The lead comment (7:48 AM) on Opalka’s article says much about how fatigue has set in to this ancient, postmodernistic energy source:

Will this desire to feed at the public trough never end? The mere fact that wind needs the PTCs to survive tells us very loudly and clearly it is not a competitive power technology at this time.

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions … adaptation to the unknown can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.”

– F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), p. 76

Whenever the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is confronted with evidence that its proposed regulations will kill jobs, risk blackouts, or otherwise harm economic growth, it typically seeks refuge in its own estimates of the amazing public health benefits the proposal will have.…

“The state’s Public Utility Commission, or PUC, approved the CREZ concept in 2008 in response to a directive [mandate] from the [Texas] Legislature in 2005.”

– Kate Galbraith, “Texas’ Wind Transmission Project Keeps Rolling,” The Texas Tribune, September 8, 2010

“Lt. Governor David Dewhurst was the largest recipient of [CREZ] contractor funds with $419,250 from January 2005 through February 2010. …. The CREZ project has turned out to be a money-making opportunity for many politicians and companies.”

– Dan Byfield, “The Politics of Transmission Lines.”  San Angelo Standard Times, June 29, 2010.

A political fight of national import is on in Texas for the U.S. Senate between Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz and Republican-establishment favorite David Dewhurst. Voting this week has put these two in a runoff come July 31st for the Republican nomination.…