Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » One Step Forward, One Step Back

So we make some progress on ethanol, but just replace it without another absurdly dumb subsidized energy technology, in this case wind. Wind is not even close to being ready for grid service, and given the hot backup power one needs to cover its unpredictability, it does about zero to reduce CO2 emissions. A series of studies have shown that it has done nothing to reduce fossil fuel consumption in either Germany or Denmark. And the whole green jobs thing is even more absurd — it makes no sense theoretically, as shifting private investment to less economically viable uses has never, ever created jobs — and has been debunked in practice in both Denmark and Spain.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has bent over backwards to ignore the science and push wind, for no other reason I can figure out except to avoid admitting he was wrong when he campaigned on wind. This makes for a pretty depressing story, and, given there are more documents the Administration is resisting releasing under FOIA, probably more ugly news to follow.

We Are Open and Honest With Everyone Who Agrees With Us | Climate Skeptic

Warwick Hughes makes a pretty good case that in fact Jones was quite open with his data and working papers, as long as he thought the requestor was on his side. Once he found out certain people were working to replicated and find errors in his work, those people were locked out. The impressin one gets from his article is that there is now a pretty easy answer to “how can all these climate scientists be so wrong?” The answer is that they have never had any scrutiny whatsoever on their results, and anyone who attempted such scrutiny were marginalized and vilified by the inner core community.

Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Hot Money

Apparently our state government has been in another subsidy bidding war over a [solar] plant relocation, and fortunately it lost. Why the state government pulls together Defcon 5 activity levels to bring 80 jobs to a town of 4 million is just beyond me.

Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » It’s Time to Admit that CO2 Abatement is Going to be Freaking Expensive

I have said for years that to really get to an 80% reduction target, gas prices would have to rise over $20 a gallon

Treason Is A Matter Of Dates - Walter Russell Mead's Blog - The American Interest

Gosh, one has to ask, if these terrible things were going on for such a long time, why didn’t the New York Times notice this earlier on? Why didn’t the New York Times break this important story back when it was news, rather than lamely sweeping up at the end of the parade? Could it be that a climate of politically-correct group-think inhibited the editors and reporters at the country’s newspaper of record from recognizing a one of the major stories of the decade? Could the environmental writers at the Times be just a teensy bit too close to their sources?