Daily News 4 Feb 2025

Chris Wright: Guilty as Charged (DeSmog backfires again

“The energy and climate dialog is fraught with so many challenges. Let’s not compound the problem by using destructively deceptive terms like climate crisis, energy transition, carbon pollution, clean energy, and dirty energy. These terms are nonsense. Let’s just be honest.” (- Chris Wright, quoted below)

DeSmog’s “Climate Disinformation Database” is so filled with quality and quantity that non-members are itching to join. The thousand or so should be doubled, tripled. Maybe a phone book will be necessary as the political winds shift from stale alarmism to CO2/fossil fuel optimism.

The latest profile, somewhat hilariously, belongs to the new head of the U,S. Department of Energy, Chris Wright, who blew through his confirmation hearings and has Democrats, not only Republicans and independents, excited. What a great person! And a great pick! But he needs to shut down and minimize the civilian side of DOE for consumers, taxpayers, and fiscal responsibility.

Here is DeSmog’s “expose”, really attributes.

According to Wright, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition.” He has also claimed that “any negative impacts from climate change were clearly overwhelmed by the benefits of increasing energy consumption.”⁸

Wright described Bjorn Lomborg, who downplays the climate crisis, as a “friend” and Lomborg’s book as “fantastic” in a 2020 interview.⁹

The CO2 Coalition, which celebrates carbon dioxide as “essential for life,” approved Wright and mentioned him in their newsletter. ¹⁰ ¹¹

In an interview with DeSmog, CO2 coalition executive director Gregory Wright commented, “The main thing that he [Wright] and I and the CO2 Coalition agree on is that increasing CO2 is a net benefit, it’s not the demon molecule, it’s the miracle molecule.”¹²

Alex Epstein, who has described the green movement as “fundamentally an anti-human movement,”¹³ and has claimed there is no climate emergency, ¹⁴ wrote a commentary piece titled “Why I Strongly Support Chris Wright for Secretary of Energy.”¹⁵

According to Wright’s LinkedIn account, he has been a board member of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) since January 2007 and also a board member of the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) since the same date.¹⁶

PERC and PRI have long been US members of the Atlas Network, and the network still publishes its membership online.¹⁷ DeSmog has reported on the Atlas Network’s behind-the-scenes influence on issues such as the vilification of climate activists.¹⁸

And these quotations:

““There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.“

“These five terms: climate crisis, energy transition, carbon pollution, clean energy, and dirty energy are not only deceptive, they are in fact destructive deceptions. Destructive because they drive centrist politicians and regulators to oppose life-critical infrastructure like building pipelines and natural gas export terminals.”

“… any negative impacts from climate change were clearly overwhelmed by the benefits of increasing energy consumption.“

“We have seen no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, or floods, despite endless fear-mongering of the media, politicians and activists. This is not my opinion. This is the facts, as contained in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.”

“Energy transition is another term that has been used to justify policies that deploy large government subsidies and mandates to enrich well-off and connected, while impoverishing everyone else. Yes, I am one of those needlessly enriched by these destructive policies, as increasing barriers to oil and gas production have predictably driven up prices and delivered record profitability in the oil and gas industry. “

“haven’t these trillions of dollars of subsidies over 20 or 30 years driven at least the start of a real energy transition? In short, no. World demand for oil, natural gas, and coal hit all-time records last year.”

“Carbon pollution is the most shameful marketing term that I’ve ever heard…. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a greenhouse gas. Confusing these two is frightening kids.”

““Clean energy and dirty energy are two other fact-free, shameless marketing labels…. It would be hard to call wind or solar clean or low environmental impact with a straight face.

“The energy and climate dialog is fraught with so many challenges. Let’s not compound the problem by using destructively deceptive terms like climate crisis, energy transition, carbon pollution, clean energy, and dirty energy. These terms are nonsense. Let’s just be honest.”

The post Chris Wright: Guilty as Charged (DeSmog backfires again appeared first on Master Resource.

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February 4, 2025 at 01:13AM

Daily News 4 Feb 2025

UK Losing Wind Gamble a Warning for World

By Vijay Jayaraj

On a frigid January morning, the fruit of the U.K.’s overreliance on wind energy was reaped when its contribution to the national grid plummeted to a pitiful zero. Solar output, meanwhile, was a paltry 1% of power generation.

This wasn’t just a fluke but rather a stark illustration of the dangers of building an energy system around inherently unreliable sources like wind and solar. The British government’s gamble on wind energy to meet aggressive and unattainable net-zero targets is leading toward an energy crisis of unprecedented proportions.

The Volatility of Wind Energy

Wind power’s appeal has always been its promise of environmentally clean, inexhaustible energy. But real-world experience shows the technology to be damaging to ecosystems and unreliable. Although Earth will always have wind, knowing when and how much is as impossible as the foolish pursuit of controlling the climate.

As the monthly production chart from GridWatch demonstrates, wind energy swings wildly from nearly 100% of the output to complete collapse within days or even hours. This winter, as a very cold high-pressure system settled over the U.K., wind turbines went idle just when demand for heating and electricity surged.

January’s failure forced the U.K. to rely heavily on gas-fired power plants and electricity imports from the continent. During these periods, the high cost of imported power inflates energy bills that are already among the highest in Europe.

British households, on average, pay nearly double the electricity rates of their mostly nuclear-powered French counterparts. This disparity is largely due to British policies that subsidize renewable energy while penalizing more reliable fossil fuel-based generation.

Paying to Stop the Wind

Adding insult to injury, the U.K.’s energy policies include a perverse mechanism: compensating wind turbine operators to switch off the machines during periods of high wind. On January 24, Storm Eowyn battered Ireland and Scotland with gusts exceeding 100 miles per hour. Such high winds require some turbines to be idled to prevent grid overload and mechanical damage.

“Consumers face a triple hit in constraint costs at times of high winds,” says Lee Moroney of U.K.’s Renewable Energy Forum. “Not only do they pay for electricity that wind farms predicted they would generate but were instructed not to because of grid congestion, but they also have to pay a bonus to the wind farms for the trouble of reducing output. And they must also pay for the costs of turning up conventional generation (such as gas-fired power stations] to make up the shortfall.”

The U.K.’s dwindling domestic gas production and reliance on imports mean that fluctuations in wholesale gas prices hit consumers hard. In 2024, energy bills skyrocketed by 80% compared to 2019 levels, a trend that shows no signs of abating. These costs are exacerbated by government-mandated levies to fund “renewable” energy projects and carbon offset schemes.

The branding of wind energy as a green solution is false advertising in the extreme:

Manufacturing turbines requires vast amounts of fossil fuels – from mining and processing rare earth minerals to producing the steel and concrete for their massive structures.
The amount of land required for a turbine to produce comparable amounts of energy is many times that of nuclear and fossil fuels.
Extraction of rare earths, essential for turbine magnets, is associated with severe environmental degradation and human rights abuses in mining regions.
Wind turbines kill wildlife, especially birds and bats, and are suspected to contribute to whale deaths in offshore locations.
Wind turbine blades become non-recyclable waste that often goes to landfills.

Citizens of the U.K. have missed serious power blackouts by a whisker. But recent events highlight the dangers of prioritizing ideology over practicality and serve as a warning to those who would allow climate dogma to guide energy policies.

This commentary was first published at American Thinkeron January 28, 2025.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.

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February 4, 2025 at 12:06AM

Daily News 4 Feb 2025

A Stark Message For Trump Supporters

“Liz Cheney offers a stark message to the GOP members who continue to support Trump” June 9, 2022 Liz Cheney offers a stark message to GOP members who continue to support Trump : NPR

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February 3, 2025 at 11:37PM