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:

Trump’s new climate committee could welcome the world’s smartest global-warming skeptics

Mueller’s ‘Foreign Agent’ Prosecutions May Lead To Probes Of Green Groups

Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet

Grassley, Wyden introduce tax extenders bill (including PTC?)…

“Professor Christy is an excellent choice for EPA’s Science Advisory Board. And if you doubt me, please read the quotations below that DeSmogBlog has put up on its website to purportedly discredit Secretary Wheeler’s choice. Christy’s views are mainstream in the world that most of us live in.”

“From the Climate Disinformation Database: John R. Christy” reads the headline from DeSmogBlog in its “Climate Denier Spotlight.” The following short profile follows (emphasis added):

John R. Christy is a professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He’s a vocal critic of climate change models and has testified on numerous occasions against the mainstream scientific views on man-made climate change. Christy has affiliations with a number of climate science-denying think tanks, including the Heartland Institute and the Cato Institute.…

“If the current pace of the buildup of these gases continues, the effect is likely to be a warming of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit [between now and] the year 2025 to 2050, according to these projections…. The rise in global temperature is predicted to … caus[e] sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century.”

–  Philip Shabecoff, “Global Warming Has Begun.” New York Times, June 24, 1988.

Climate exaggeration (in the long Malthusian tradition) creates a paper trail and data points for falsification. Some 30 years ago, temperature- and sea-level–rise predictions were made that are in the news. As the predictions near the beginning of the forecast period, the skeptics of alarmism are well on their way to yet another victory.…

 “With the exception of EPA’s Dr. Allan Carlin, I have never encountered a published view of a federal employee questioning that catastrophic climate change is caused by carbon dioxide.  The penalties from this conflict are too severe of loss of pay increases, promotions, or dismissal.”

In the past few weeks, statements of scientists challenging the hypothesis that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels is causing catastrophic global warming are being criticized on ad hominem grounds. The charge is that there exists an inherent conflict-of-interest, owingto their sources of income, specifically income from fossil-fuel companies or pro-fossil-fuel organizations otherwise.

The starting point (it was surely orchestrated) was the attack on Dr. Willie Soon by the February 21, 2015 New York Times article, “Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher,” by Justin Gillis and John Schwartz.…