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:

Superior: New EU proposals would kill solar and wind

Study: Turbine Effects on Bats Likely Worse Than Thought

Study: Solar Energy’s Dirty Little Secret

Study: Large Solar Performance Reduction Due to Dust

Study: Evaluation of a proposal for grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar

Study: A Looming Disaster in Energy Security

Wind Turbines Are NOT Clean or Green, and Provide Zero Global Energy

Storage Burden Should Fall on Wind and Solar Projects, not the Grid

Wind Power’s Future in U.S.…

“Will Ms. Lavelle admit that global lukewarming is a valid area of scientific inquiry and conclusion; there are benefits, not only costs, to the human influence on climate; and ‘government failure’ exists alongside ‘market failure’ in the quest to ‘do something’? Adaptation to realistic scenarios, private sector as well as public, is an alternative to–and opportunity cost of–mitigation.”

The article by Marianne Lavelle, “5 Shades of Climate Denial, All on Display in the Trump White House,” a feature at Instide Climate News (June 9, 2017), deserves a second look. The good news is that a much more useful categorization that has been offered (by Richard Mueller, below) can be used to correct the unstudied, biased five categories presented in ICN.

Here are Lavelle’s five categories:

1. “It’s Not Real”
2. “‘It’s Not Our Fault,’ and Other Lighter Shades”
3. “The Science Is Just Too Uncertain.

Editor note: Professor Dolan kindly submitted this rebuttal to Robert Bradley’s post yesterday, “Hayek was not a Malthusian or Global Tariff Advocate (link to a carbon tax peculiar, errant).” Bradley’s post, in turn, was a critique of Dolan’s original piece, “Friedrich Hayek on Carbon Taxes.”

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I am happy to comment on the validity of the nine points you raise regarding Hayek and a carbon tax.

1. Hayek was suspicious of scientific ‘consensus,’ given the consensus of Keynesianism and central planning in his lifetime.

I agree with what you say about Hayek’s attitude toward the Keynesian consensus. However, my reading is that he distinguished between social sciences and natural sciences, and between the ability of people to offer informed judgement on fields in which they have specific expert training compared with fields in which they do not have such training.…

“America has a short list of truly shameful ‘days,’—among them the Dred Scott decision, the Trail of Tears, Japanese internment, and Abu Ghraib—most of them symbolic of a larger national moral failure. I hope I am wrong, but I fear that today will join that list.”

“If all that [climate-policy-related] deregulation comes to pass, then I predict future generations will look back on today with particular scorn and shame.”

“A single executive order might therefore seem unremarkable. But today’s action is significant….  At stake are the global economy, entire ecosystems, and the lives of millions—most of them not yet living. Those future generations will judge the authors of today’s policy harshly.”

– Nathan Richardson, “Trump’s Climate Executive Order Discards American Values.” Resources for the Future, March 28, 2017.