GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

  The scientific journal Nature in December  retracted  one of the most influential climate economics papers of the past decade. The paper, by Maximilian Kotz, Anders Levermann and Leonie Wenz, claimed that unmitigated climate change would cost the global economy $38 trillion a year (in 2005 international dollars) by midcentury. It was the second-most-mentioned climate paper by the media in 2024, according to  Carbon Brief . The paper was cited by central banks and governments to justify aggressive climate policies. Then it collapsed . The authors  acknowledged  that its errors were “too substantial” for a correction. Nature retracted the paper more than 18 months after first learning of its problems. Most media coverage treated this as an unfortunate aberration in what is otherwise settled science. The retraction, however, isn’t a one-off.  It revealed a crack that runs much deeper  into the foundation of climate research. Eco...

  Gov.  Kathy Hochul  wants her Democratic Legislature to delay implementing New York’s far-reaching climate mandates because they’ll raise energy costs. The Democratic response:   That is the point   of the mandates so we’re not going to change them. That’s more or less what Albany Democrats argue in a new friend-of-court brief that backs a lawsuit that seeks to compel Ms. Hochul to enforce the state’s 2019 climate law. That law requires the state to develop such policies as a cap-and-tax program to reduce its CO2 emissions 40% by 2030 and 85% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels. The “Legislature knowingly enacted a statute that would require large-scale economic transformation, including substantial and uncertain costs,” the Democrats write. The law “directly acknowledges that the transition to a clean energy economy may impose costs  and affect certain sectors more than others ,”  including job displacement in fossil fuels. Ms. Hochul argues that Congre...

  Thu, April 30, 2026   As the Trump administration considers shelling out billions to shutter offshore wind projects,  energy executives are facing the uncomfortable reality that renewable energy may no longer be a viable business in the U.S.   Earlier this week, Trump’s Department of the Interior said it would pay offshore wind ventures Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind  a total of $885 million —in what essentially amounts to a refund—to walk away from their respective offshore wind leases. The announcement comes after the administration last month struck a similar  $1 billion deal under the same terms with French energy company TotalEnergies , bringing total reimbursements the administration has promised to offshore wind ventures to nearly $2 billion. All three ventures pledged to redirect the money they would have invested in wind into fossil fuel projects like liquefied natural gas (LNG), oil, and gas, and agreed not to pursue any more offshore wind...

  Electric reliability margins this summer in New York will be “the lowest ... in recent history,” with extreme weather and an aging generation mix contributing to a risk of blackouts, the New York Independent System Operator said Friday. “Coordination with generation owners, utility companies, neighboring grid operators, and government officials will be essential as we work to maintain  grid reliability this summer ,” Aaron Markham, ISO vice president of operations, said in a statement. The ISO’s  annual summer reliability assessment  estimates 34,615 MW of power resources will be available this year to meet forecasted peak demand of 31,578 MW. The ISO said it is required to maintain 2,620 MW from the available resources in reserve, leaving a reliability margin of 417 MW under baseline summer conditions. New York’s reliability margin has declined almost 80% since 2022, when it was 1,918 MW.  “This assessment reflects the challenges of the grid in transitio...

  April 28, 2026 T oday’s  trip to the gas station will be an unwelcome reminder of the imbroglio in the Persian Gulf. The average price nationwide in January was  $2.81/gallon , a five-year low. It is now  $4.11 . Grim as that is, it is significantly less of a hike than that endured by Americans during the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks. And autos typically consume less fuel than half a century ago. With (possibly) limited exceptions on the West Coast, drivers are highly unlikely to see a return to the gas lines of the 1970s. The principal reasons for thinking so are a wider range of energy resources, improved efficiency, and, to oversimplify, a rebirth of energy self-sufficiency. In recent years, the U.S. has become a net oil exporter, for the first time since  around 1950 . By 1973, the U.S. was importing around  a third  of its oil, a figure that ultimately rose far higher. Much of that came through the Strait of Hormuz. This changed with the revival of ...

  Last month, following a string of legal defeats over his efforts to halt construction of offshore wind turbines through regulatory fiat, President Donald Trump   tried something new : Paying developers to quit. The plan worked: French energy giant TotalEnergies agreed to abandon its two offshore wind farms in exchange for $1 billion from the federal government, with the promise that it would reinvest that money in U.S. oil and gas development. Reporting by Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo later showed that the legal reasoning behind the federal government's cash offer was  shaky , and that the actual text of the agreement contained  no definite assurances  that the company would invest any more than it was already planning to. Last week,  I told you  that more deals were in the works, including with another French company, the utility Engie. Now the Trump administration has confirmed the rumors. On Monday, the Department of the Interior  announced ...