The major federal tax and grant subsidies for windpower and other qualifying renewables are scheduled to expire at year-end. And claims of robust economics, competitiveness, and growth have given way to fear of a freer, less preferential market in 2013 and beyond. Wind’s artificial boom/upcoming bust is the risky business of political capitalism.

Last Friday’s edition of Environment & Energy Daily ran this story (sub. req.):

The American Wind Energy Association estimates that 10,000 jobs will be lost by September — primarily among manufacturers of wind turbines and components facing a dearth of orders for next year. By the end of the first quarter of 2013, the industry will have shed about 37,000 jobs without quick action on a PTC renewal, according to a widely cited study AWEA commissioned from Navigant Consulting.

[Editor note: This November 29, 2011, post is updated in light of the admission yesterday by climate activist Peter Gleick that he is the source of the stolen Heartland Institute documents. Gleick’s malfeasance continues the authoritarian, anti-intellectual behaviors exhibited by neo-Malthusians, most infamously revealed by Climategate, but also including the treatment of the late Julian Simon by Paul Ehrlich.

Updates on what is now being called GleickGate can be found on popular climate websites, including those of Andrew Revkin, Judith Curry, Watts Up With That, Climate Depot, and Climate Audit.]

I read all about it at Judith Curry’s blog (Breaking News: Gleick Confesses) and added this comment (now 250 and counting) at the midnight hour:

Michael Mann: “I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it’s not helping the cause.”

Phil Jones: “I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process.”

The above emails are representative of the sickly fare of a group of physical scientists who set out to change the world from one of open-ended economic growth to one of economic constraint via international carbon planning. The good news is that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gatekeepers have once again been exposed by the e-mail release of last week, now known the world over as Climategate 2.0.…

“The interventionist in advocating additional public expenditure is not aware of the fact that the funds available are limited. He does not realize that increasing expenditure in one department enjoins restricting it in other departments. In his opinion there is plenty of money available. The income and wealth of the rich can be freely tapped…. It never occurs to him [think Obama] that grave arguments could be advanced in favor of restricting public spending and lowering the burden of taxation. The champions of cuts in the budget are in his eyes merely the defenders of the manifestly unfair class interests of the rich.”

– Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (1949), 1966, pp. 856–57.

“This is where we stand in our current debt ceiling debate. Government is too big, too bloated.