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:

• Climate trillions frittered in the wind
• Study: The Social Cost of Carbon and Carbon Taxes
• Wind Farm Back-of-the-Envelope Economic Analysis
• The Confusions of the ‘Conservative’ Carbon Tax
• Inconvenient Energy Realities
• Infrasound noise guidelines: Antiquated and irrelevant for protecting populations
• Archive: Big Wind’s Dirty Little Secret — Radioactive Waste
• Study: The Impact of Wind Energy on Wildlife and the Environment
• Study: Green Killing Machines, the impact of renewable energy on wildlife and nature
• Fact-Check: Fearmongers Over Nevada’s Yucca Mountain
• Tucker Carlson TV segment: the Green New Deal is a Power Play
• 100% Renewable Is 100% Unachievable, Even If You’re An Optimist
• Sustainability and Global Warming Give Birth to Renewable Energy
• Prepare for green blackouts: That’s what’s in store for New York
• Balloon Tests to Simulate Turbine Height
• Battery Storage—An Infinitesimal Part of Electrical Power
• Excellent short video: Climate Apartheid?

At 41, [James Rogers] was named CEO of PSI Energy Inc., a small, financially troubled Indiana utility. Breaking ranks with others in the electric-power industry, he supported legislation putting caps on sulfur-dioxide emissions. “Some of my guys thought I was drinking the environmental Kool-Aid,” he said later. “But I said, ‘Let’s shape this, let’s make some money.’”

– James Hagerty, “Jim Rogers, Head of a Coal-Burning Utility, Crusaded Against Global Warming.” Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2018.

“I made money on sulfur [dioxide], and I’ll make money on carbon [dioxide].”

– James Rogers. Quoted in Eric Pooley, “The Smooth-Talking King of Coal–and Climate Change.” Bloomberg Businessweek, June 3, 2010.

James Eugene “Jim” Rogers Jr. (1947–2018) was a notable political capitalist (rent seeker) of the late 20th/early 21st century electricity market.…

“The private sector’s push for rural electrification would be forgotten as electrifying the countryside became a political issue during the New Deal, specifically with the creation of the Rural Electrification Administration in 1935.”

– Robert Bradley, Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies (2011), p. 165.

“Next to their ability to pump water mechanistically, small wind turbines are best known for their ability to generate power at remote homesteads…. During the 1930s, when only 10% of U.S. farms were served by central-station power, literally hundreds of thousands of [“home light plants”] were in use on the Great Plains…. [This industry] collapsed quickly after the introduction of electricity by the Rural Electrification Administration during the 1930s.”

– Paul Gipe. Wind Energy Comes of Age (1995), pp. 125, 131.

The New Deal’s policies toward oil and coal in the 1933–39 era were hardly succeeded from anyone’s perspective.…

“It has become increasingly clear that Donald Trump’s presidency hasn’t just led to the withdrawal of the United States from the landmark agreement. It has also halted the rest of the world’s efforts…. Call it the ‘Trump’ effect.”

– Joseph Curtin, “Trump Has Officially Ruined Climate Change Diplomacy for Everyone.” FT, December 12, 2018.

Another realistic, “defeatist” article about the futile global crusade to cap and reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions has been published. “Trump Has Officially Ruined Climate Change Diplomacy for Everyone,” subtitled “The evidence is in: the Paris Agreement doesn’t work without the United States,” joins other articles (such as rising global coal consumption, profiled last week at MasterResource) in the death rattle.

Joseph Curtin, senior fellow at the Institute of International and European Affairs, authored the blunt assessment.…