Free Republic

Big Wind hides evidence of turbine bird kills and gets rewarded. Here is how they do it. In 1984 the California Energy Commission .. the primary environmental issue alluded to was the extreme hazard that wind turbines posed to raptors. ... Since the early 1980s, the industry has known there is no way its propeller-style turbines could ever be safe for raptors. With exposed blade tips spinning in open space at speeds up to 200 mph, it was impossible. Wind developers also knew they would have a public relations nightmare if people ever learned how many eagles are actually being...

President Obama once praised it as a shining example of America's clean energy future. "With projects like this one," he said at the site of a solar plant just before construction started, "we're putting Americans to work producing clean, home-grown American energy."

As Florida enviros push for their solar amendment, solar’s undesirability goes unmentioned.The important thing to know about solar and wind power, and other so-called “renewable” sources of energy, is that they aren’t necessary. Au the contraire, their dominance of the energy mix would be a disaster for the republic. Solar and wind create trifling amounts of power at a multiple of the cost of power made available by fossil fuels.Increased reliance on pricy power from wind and solar would drive up the overall cost of energy, which in turn would drive up the cost of everything. EVERYTHING! Not just individual...

Executives of a Pennsylvania green energy company singled out for praise by Bill Clinton were arrested on fraud charges on Thursday in connection with an alleged Ponzi scheme. The individuals are facing charges of wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy over their roles in running a green energy company that authorities say was an elaborate $54 million Ponzi scheme, the Associated Press reported. Prosecutors said the trio lied to investors that their “biochar” technology and “carbon-negative” housing in Tennessee made millions, but they had almost no earnings and used the money to repay earlier investors and for themselves. The scam...

The Climate Change Business Journal has calculated that global warming is now a $1.5 trillion a year industry. The Business Journal’s report is not available for free online, but its findings are reviewed by the Insurance Journal. They are eye-opening, to say the least: The $1.5 trillion global “climate change industry” grew at between 17 and 24 percent annually from 2005-2008, slowing to between 4 and 6 percent following the recession with the exception of 2011’s inexplicable 15 percent growth, according to Climate Change Business Journal. The San Diego, Calif.-based publication includes within that industry nine segments and 38 sub-segments....

You may have a "green" car, but it could be causing black rain in China from the graphite mined and used in its lithium ion battery. Two academics at Toronto's York University, Carla Lipsig-Mumme and Caleb Goods, applaud many of the new advances in green technology in recent years, but at the same time warn that those very technologies may come with a host of environmental issues. The pair issue a caution about “superindustrialization” in which the answer to climate change is a matter of “technological adjustment.” In an article recently published in The Conversation and picked up by the...

The woes of China’s solar industry deepened in recent days as one panel manufacturer lost nearly half its market capitalization and another said it might be forced to close down. Shares in Hanergy Thin Film Power Group Ltd. , whose meteoric rise had troubled industry watchers, nearly halved in value Wednesday before trading was halted. The 47% plunge, to 3.91 Hong Kong dollars (50 U.S. cents), wiped US$18.6 billion from Hanergy’s market capitalization. The company declined to comment on the fall—which came during its annual shareholders’ meeting in Hong Kong—but said it would make an announcement later in the day.

General Motors will stop making the Chevrolet Volt for four weeks in June and July due to slow sales and to deal with the change to an all-new version of the gas-electric hybrid car. The company says the Detroit-Hamtramck plant that makes the Volt and four other cars will probably stay open through the summer despite plans for the Volt. The factory also is undergoing construction so it can build a new full-size Cadillac CT6 and the 2016 Volt starting late in the summer. Sales of electric and hybrid cars have slowed this year, largely due to low gasoline prices....

The latest United Nations effort in Lima to draft a new global treaty on climate change proves Prime Minister Stephen Harper was right when he described its efforts as “a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.” Harper was pilloried by Canada’s opposition parties after his statement, contained in a 2002 fundraising letter for the now-defunct Canadian Alliance, was revealed in 2007, shortly after he won the 2006 federal election. But Harper was right. Indeed he was vindicated in 2011, when a senior UN climate official, German economist Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,...

"In 1993, the [Volvo Environment] Prize went to Professor Paul R. Ehrlich of Stanford University and Professor John P. Holdren of the University of California in Berkeley, whose work laid the foundations of our understanding of how the dynamics of population growth, rising living standards and changing technology, as well as the relationships between them, interact in the context of environmental problems." List of past winners (and their work) from 1990 - 2014 Professor Paul R. Ehrlich, Professor John P. Holdren

Recycling is a scam. I’ve said it before. It does nothing for the environment. It does plenty for the wallets of the well connected who have recycling businesses. That’s the only reason for recycling.Western countries dump their “recycling” into Third World countries in heaps indistinguishable from the old bad landfills. Except the difference is that they’re in major cities. These filthy photographs show monstrous mounting piles of waste overflowing into streets and even blocking roads in the city of Shenzhen in southern China’s Guangdong Province.The smell is so bad nauseous residents have taken to wearing masks.Tonnes of plastic recycling...

Some people call it "renewable energy" but I prefer to call it "alternative energy" because that's what it really is: an alternative to energy that actually works (eg nuclear and anything made from wonderful, energy-rich fossil fuel.) Now a pair of top boffins from uber-green Google's research department have reached the same conclusion. Ross Konigstein and David Fork, both Stanford PhDs (aerospace engineering; applied physics) were employed on a Google research project which sought to enhance renewable technology to the point where it could produce energy more cheaply than coal. But after four years, the project was closed down. In...

A recent blog post on Sightline, an environmental blog in the Northwest, celebrated the gusher of dependable revenue to Washington State flowing from a steep carbon tax. The post showcases just why a carbon tax is a dangerous policy. As we at IER have been warning for years, the advocates of a carbon tax are fooling themselves if they think it will be calibrated to the “optimal” level reflecting the “negative externality” of greenhouse gas emissions. And in this debate the most foolish of all are the handful of vocal conservatives claiming that a new carbon tax will be used...

Ron Klain and Solyndra The administration’s point man on a solar fraud is now in charge of Ebola. By Andrew C. McCarthy NRO October 20,2014 Ron Klain is a sharp-elbowed Democratic political operative with no medical expertise. Tapping him as “Ebola czar” may not be the president’s best move when, as it is, no one can believe a word the Obama administration says. And that’s not just because Mr. Klain is yet another lobbyist recruited despite Mr. Obama’s vow that his administration would shun lobbyists. Klain was also a central player in the president’s Solyndra fraud, which soaked taxpayers for...

Ron Klain is a sharp-elbowed Democratic political operative with no medical expertise. Tapping him as “Ebola czar” may not be the president’s best move when, as it is, no one can believe a word the Obama administration says. And that’s not just because Mr. Klain is yet another lobbyist recruited despite Mr. Obama’s vow that his administration would shun lobbyists. Klain was also a central player in the president’s Solyndra fraud, which soaked taxpayers for over half a billion dollars for the benefit of Obama cronies. In Faithless Execution, I recount the Solyndra fraud. It never got the attention...

The European Commission published a study on Monday (13 October) providing the first full dataset on energy costs and subsidies for the 28 member countries across the different power generation technologies, revealing that the largest share of public intervention in the energy sector has been in favor of solar and on-shore wind energy. The results show that in 2012, the total value of public intervention in energy in the member countries has been between €120-140 billion. The report finds that the largest amounts of current public support in 2012 went to renewables, in particular to solar (€14.7 billion) and onshore...

Solar company formed weeks before Chip Hagan's business received grant. RALEIGH — Sen. Kay Hagan’s husband and son created a solar energy contracting company in August 2010, and then, using $250,644 in federal stimulus grant funds, her husband hired that same company to install solar panels at a building he owns. Public records show that Green State Power was formed seven weeks before JDC Manufacturing — a company owned in part by Greensboro attorney Charles “Chip” Hagan III, Sen. Hagan’s husband — received the stimulus grant for the solar project at a 300,000-square-foot facility in Reidsville, N.C. ... Hagan, a...

Renewable energy has become a potent rallying cry uniting Hollywood and the Beltway. “We can move our economy town by town, state by state to renewable energy and a sustainable future,” Leonardo DiCaprio says in his eight-minute climate movie Carbon, released in August. In his fiscal-showdown speech during his first term, in April 2011, President Obama put Paul Ryan’s proposals for a 70 percent cut in clean energy at the top of his list of reprehensible and unnecessary reductions. “These aren’t the kind of cuts you make when you’re trying to get rid of some waste or find extra savings...

BOSTON (AP) — Many Massachusetts households are going to see their electric bills shoot up 37 percent this winter. State regulators have approved a 37 percent increase for National Grid household customers that would mean an average of $33 per month more for the typical residential customer. Large business customers will see even higher increases.

Gina McCarthy insists reducing carbon emissions, fighting climate change boost economyGina McCarthy argued Thursday that her home state of Massachusetts is proof you can cut greenhouse gas emissions while fostering economic prosperity, but the Environmental Protection Agency administrator failed to mention the apparent trade-off for consumers: dramatically higher electricity prices. In a speech promoting President Obama’s climate change agenda, Ms. McCarthy ignored the fact that New England states — which nearly a decade ago formed the nation’s first regional “cap and trade” system — are dealing with electricity rates more than 35 percent higher than the national average. She also...