Green New Deal
November 21, 2025 — John Hinderaker
You still see some Western liberals praising Communist China for leading the way on “green” energy. Look at all the solar panels and windmills they produce! say the liberals. Yes, they produce solar panels and wind turbines in factories that run on coal. They sell the solar panels and wind turbines to us, because we are dumb enough to buy them, and because they want to control our economy. Meanwhile,
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November 11, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Wind and solar energy are both intermittent and weather-dependent, while our needs for electricity are constant. How, then, to make them viable? Batteries! What batteries? Big ones. Do such batteries exist? Not exactly. Australia’s left-wing government has been trying to transition from coal power to wind and solar, without success. Most recently, a giant battery facility at Waratah, not yet in operation, has suffered a catastrophic failure and will be
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November 8, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Net zero was always a terrible idea, but I had no idea it had infiltrated medicine. But yes: Britain’s National Health Service resolved to strive for net zero, and spent £1.4 billion on the effort. The result? Zero: The health service has ploughed millions into green initiatives, such as rolling out electric ambulances, adopting “climate-friendly pain relief” that does not contain greenhouse gases, and putting environmental credentials at the heart
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October 30, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Pretty much every calculation you have ever seen relating to “green” energy–cost estimates, productivity claims, and so on–has been wrong. “Green” energy really is a scam, as President Trump says. It is consistently sold on the basis of fake science. The latest case in point comes from Great Britain, via the Telegraph: “Miliband admits wind power less reliable than expected.” The Government has slashed forecasts for the amount of electricity
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September 24, 2025 — Bill Glahn
From the New York Post, $2.2 billion solar plant in California turned off after years of wasted money: ‘Never lived up to its promises.’ They never do, do they? The entire history of renewable energy is overpromise and underdeliver. It’s the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert. Rather than miles of solar panels, it’s fields of mirrors focused on a central pillar to produce heat, and eventually, electricity.
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August 17, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Five things that caught my eye over the last few days, about which I don’t have enough to say to merit a post: Minnesota has become a laughingstock, as has public radio. Combine the two, and this is what you get: I actually like that. Everything that reveals the insanity of the global warming crowd is a public service. Next, my idea of solid police work: Police in Paris arrest
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July 21, 2025 — Bill Glahn
From KTLA, Federal agents seize 300 pounds of meth hidden in solar panels at LAX. Had the amount seized been exactly 900 pounds, I would have questioned the very underpinnings of reality. KTLA reports, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Monday morning that officers seized nearly 300 pounds of the highly addictive stimulant, which suspects attempted to disguise in between the panels. Photos provided by CBP appear to show officers
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July 11, 2025 — Bill Glahn
Finally, some good news. From the Wall Street Journal, Surging defaults on loans used to buy residential solar panels are cascading through Wall Street, catching bond investors and private-credit funds in their wake. Some background from WSJ, About 50,000 U.S. homes had solar panels installed last year, up from about 14,000 in 2019, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Falling panel prices fueled the surge, but so did easy
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July 11, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Wind and solar energy, along with the batteries and transmission lines they require to function even minimally, are inherently bad for the environment. But sometimes they are even worse, as when turbine blades fail. This sad story from the Nantucket Current is one we have seen repeatedly around the country: GE Vernova will pay the town of Nantucket and island businesses $10.5 million as part of a settlement related to
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March 4, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Like a dead frog whose legs continue to kick, the “green” movement marches on, oblivious to the growing realization that the whole thing is at best a mistake, and at worst a scam. One of the insoluble problems of wind and solar energy is intermittency–the fact that most of the time, neither wind turbines nor solar panels will produce any electricity. What to do? Store electricity from panels and turbines
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February 18, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Vitol is a large energy and commodities company, with revenue of $400 billion. It has major petroleum investments, but also genuflects to the left with “renewable” investments and an ESG section on its web page. As a company that needs to make money, its forecasts reflect reality rather than fantasies. This is how Vitol sees the demand for oil from now until 2040: Vitol predicts demand for oil used in
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February 15, 2025 — John Hinderaker
One could assemble news stories like the ones below just about any day of the week: Ford Loses Another $5.1B On EVs. This week, Ford Motor Company reported that it lost $5.1 billion on its EV business in 2024. … Kelley Blue Book reported that Ford’s EV sales were 30,176 for the fourth quarter and 97,865 for the entire year. Therefore, Ford lost $46,394 for each EV it sold in
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February 11, 2025 — John Hinderaker
The Rocky Mountain Institute is a far-left, “environmentalist” organization that is best known for leading the campaign to ban gas stoves. But there is more to the organization’s radicalism than that, as energy expert Robert Bryce notes: RMI is pushing these policies even though 69% of voters oppose bans on gas stoves. However, the gas bans are only one aspect of RMI’s radical agenda. In 2023, it published a report
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September 18, 2024 — John Hinderaker
How do you heat houses without burning fossil fuels? The Greens’ answer is: heat pumps. They are pushing heat pumps as an all-electric solution, and the Biden/Harris administration has enacted major subsidies to try to entice homeowners off fossil fuels and onto heat pumps. If you are not sure what a heat pump is, you are not alone. Neither am I. I am told that it is basically the same
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August 22, 2024 — Steven Hayward
In a typical moment for Joe Biden Monday night, he said in his convention/farewell shoutfest that “women have electrical power.” He actually repeated the adjective because he couldn’t get “electoral” out of his mumble mouth, but it is possible it isn’t a mistake after all, and perhaps represents the kind of slip that conveys a deeper belief—namely, that the Biden Administration’s pro-green electricity mania has even reached those beings still
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August 18, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Our government, and a number of other Western governments, are committed to a goal of “net zero.” That is, our countries will add nothing further to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Any emissions of CO2 (e.g., breathing) will be balanced by absorption of CO2 by, e.g., plants. Various dates are specified in these aspirational statements, none of them realistic. And of course, the world’s main sources of atmospheric
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June 27, 2024 — John Hinderaker
From ESPN: “Randall Cobb, family ‘lucky to be alive’ after house fire.” Wide receiver Randall Cobb and his family escaped a fire at their Nashville, Tennessee, home this week, with his wife, Aiyda, posting, “we are lucky to be alive.” Aiyda Cobb posted to her Instagram story this week that a Tesla charger “caught fire in the garage late last night and quickly spread” through their home. “We got out
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