Thank you for your interest in the critical issues of energy and climate. Modern, comfortable lives depend on energy. Without it, prosperity is impossible. Abundant, affordable, and reliable energy is essential for human flourishing. Unfortunately, many climate policies increase energy costs, reduce availability, and undermine reliability.
Fact of the day:
EV sales are down, and non-plug-in hybrid sales are up. The subsidies and transfer payments in the billions from gas car makers to EV manufacturers end.
There was a rush before it ended to use the credits, $7,500 per EV to the consumer. Now American consumers are deciding on a cost and utility basis without government-caused distortions.
We personally like hybrids. We don’t own any. Our friends do and like them. Good gas mileage. At this time, they make far more sense than a full electric. Hybrids have much smaller batteries and no range anxiety. If the battery wears out, you can run on the gas engine.
Source for the graph: The US Energy Information Administration
Attempted Judicial Bias Exposed: Climate Guide Pulled from Federal Manual
Original article: A Failed Climate Coup in the Courts
Five Key Bullet Points
- The Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, co-produced with the National Academies, aims to guide judges on complex scientific issues but included a biased Reference Guide on Climate Science in its latest edition.
- The guide, authored by climate advocates from Columbia University, portrays climate science disagreements as similar to tobacco industry denial tactics, citing polemical sources like Michael Mann’s and Naomi Oreskes’ works.
- Congressional Republicans, including Jim Jordan and Darrell Issa, criticized the manual for predisposing judges toward plaintiffs in fossil fuel cases and questioned taxpayer funding for what they see as judicial indoctrination.
- A coalition of 27 state Attorneys General argued that the biased guide violates constitutional rights to an impartial tribunal, leading to its removal from the revised manual without explanation.
- The incident is viewed as an ideological attempt to influence neutral judicial resources, prompting calls for accountability on how such bias was introduced.
Senate’s Sneaky Move: Laying Groundwork for Energy Taxes
Original article: Coalition to Secretary Wright: Senate Carbon Tax Crowd Wants You to Help Them Implement New Energy Taxes
Five Key Bullet Points
-
A coalition of 37 organizations, led by the American Energy Alliance and Competitive Enterprise Institute, warned DOE Secretary Chris Wright about hidden language in an appropriations bill report that sets up groundwork for a national carbon dioxide tax.
- Republican Senators like Kevin Cramer and Bill Cassidy are accused of inserting the provision without transparency, aiming to pressure the Trump administration into supporting the tax despite it not being law.
- The proposed tax is described as regressive, harming families, businesses, the poor, elderly, fixed-income individuals, and institutions like schools and hospitals by raising energy costs.
- The language mirrors the stalled PROVE IT Act and directs the National Energy Technology Laboratory to study U.S. emissions intensity compared to other countries, potentially enabling carbon border adjustments.
-
The coalition urges resistance to this agenda, emphasizing that it contradicts the Trump administration’s focus on energy security and affordability.
Grid Reliability Over Ideology: Lessons from Winter Outage
Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Keeps the Lights on and save lives
Five Key Bullet Points
- Fossil fuels and nuclear power provide reliable, dispatchable energy essential for preventing deaths during extreme weather, unlike intermittent wind and solar that fail when demand is highest.
- Over $1 trillion invested in renewables has increased electricity costs without reducing reliance on baseload sources, with examples like California’s double national average rates and Europe’s even higher prices.
- Winter storms like Uri, Elliott, and Fern demonstrated renewables’ unreliability, where fossil fuels and nuclear averted widespread blackouts and saved lives by maintaining power for hospitals and homes.
- Policies restricting pipelines, closing coal plants, and neglecting nuclear maintenance have worsened grid vulnerabilities, while subsidies for renewables double costs by requiring dispatchable sources to act backups for intermittent wind and solar.
- Prioritizing energy reliability over climate ideology is crucial, as seen in Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s orders to keep coal plants online and the U.S. exiting UN climate pacts for energy dominance.
EV Debacle: $140 Billion in Automaker Losses Exposed
Original Article: How EVs Became The Most Expensive Boondoggle In Human History
Five Key Bullet Points
- Automakers like Stellantis, GM, and Ford have written down $140 billion in EV investments over three years due to low consumer demand, despite initial hype and mandates for zero-emission vehicles.
- Government pressure, including zero-emission mandates and subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act, drove companies to prioritize EVs, leading to massive financial losses and hidden costs passed to gas car consumers.
- Taxpayers have funded hundreds of billions in EV subsidies, including per-vehicle credits, battery factory incentives, and charging stations, with minimal infrastructure results like fewer than 400 ports from $7.5 billion allocated.
- CAFE standards provided additional subsidies through credits, allowing EV sales to offset gas vehicle efficiency requirements, with Tesla earning over $11 billion from such mechanisms.
- The EV push is labeled a policy failure and boondoggle, as market adoption lagged behind promises, burdening both industry and taxpayers without achieving climate goals.
Erasing History: How Climate Data Gets Rewritten
Original Article: Can We Really Trust the Global Temperature Record
Five Key Bullet Points
- The global temperature record is not a direct measurement but a constructed metric using statistical techniques, making it fragile and reliant on assumptions that can introduce biases, undermining its reliability for climate crisis claims.
- Data adjustments consistently lower past temperatures and raise recent ones, creating a pattern that minimizes historical warmth (like the Medieval Warm Period) while amplifying modern warming, often treating past variability as noise to suppress it.
- Historical records, such as the Central England Temperature series showing dramatic pre-industrial swings, are dismissed as regional, while the Medieval Warm Period has been progressively flattened in assessments through selective proxies, smoothing and dismissed as regional. Contrary to proxies from around the world.
- Examples of data manipulation include the removal and later reinstatement of early 20th-century Dutch heatwaves after scrutiny, sparse station coverage in datasets like GHCN-Daily (especially in oceans and the Southern Hemisphere), and modern extremes influenced by non-climatic factors like urban heat and sensor placement near heat sources like airports, buildings, blacktop parking lots, and HVAC systems.
- The global average temperature is deemed physically meaningless as a diagnostic tool, propping up climate narratives through a single number; overall, the record’s issues suggest it’s not trustworthy. It is a tool to artificially enhance perceptions of current warming.
