Put an End to the Wind Scam, Before it Bankrupts our Province!

May 14, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Hudak will end wind, solar fiasco

It’s amazing only one leader in the Ontario election campaign — the Progressive Conservative’s Tim Hudak — has promised to end the subsidization of inefficient, unreliable and expensive wind and solar power.

This is an obvious way to save taxpayers and hydro ratepayers billions of dollars in future costs.

Premier Kathleen Wynne can’t make that promise because to do so would be to admit the Liberals’ naive infatuation with green energy has been a financial disaster, as the non-partisan Auditor General of Ontario concluded in 2011.

The auditor general said the Liberals blundered into green energy with no business plan and no economic research, ignoring the advice of their own experts and costing taxpayers and electricity consumers billions of added dollars on their hydro bills for decades to come.

The auditor general not only found Liberal claims their Green Energy Act would create 50,000 jobs between 2009 and 2012 were nonsense, but that experience around the world has shown so-called green energy destroys more jobs than it creates because it inevitably leads to higher electricity prices.

As for NDP leader Andrea Horwath — who says she’ll rescind in 2016 the Liberals’ 2010 decision to add the 8% provincial sales tax to hydro bills — she propped up the Liberals as they were signing more and more wind and solar deals, literally throwing more and more public money down a black hole.

Incredibly, Wynne is promising to keep doing this if she’s elected, which is utter madness.

Hudak is the only leader of the three major parties telling the truth, noting he can’t break existing contracts the Liberals have already signed with wind and solar energy developers.

But he can stop throwing good money after bad.

Hudak is also promising to return local autonomy to municipalities so they can decide if they want wind turbines and solar panels in their communities, instead of having them rammed down their throats by the Liberals through their dictatorial Green Energy Act.

As for Liberals’ claim they replaced coal power with wind, it’s utter nonsense.

The Liberals replaced coal with nuclear power and natural gas.

Wind and solar are just another multi-billion-dollar Liberal boondoggle, to go along with their eHealth, Ornge and cancelled gas plants scandals and financial disasters.

If People don’t have enough food….why burn it?

May 11, 2014 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

The Ethanol Disaster

America’s renewables policy is bad for consumers, the environment, and the global poor.

Peter Suderman | May 6, 2014

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)Last November, when the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) proposed moderating years of escalating mandates by reducing the amount of ethanol that must be mixed into gasoline, a top ethanol lobbyist seemed perplexed. “We’re all just sort of scratching our heads here today and wondering why this administration is telling us to burn less of a clean-burning American fuel,” Bob Dineen, head of the Renewable Fuels Association, told The New York Times

Here are a few possible reasons why: America’s ethanol requirement destroys the environment, damages car engines, increases gas prices, and contributes to the starvation of the global poor. It’s an unmitigated disaster on nearly every level.

Start with the environment. After all, when the renewable fuel standard (RFS), which since 2005 has set forth a minimum annual volume of renewable fuels nationwide, was first set, one of the primary arguments for mandating ethanol use was that it was a greener, more environmentally friendly source of fuel that released fewer greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

This turns out to be complete hogwash. Researchers have known for years that, when the entire production process is taken into account, most supposedly green biofuels actuallyemit more greenhouse gasses than traditional fuels.

Some proponents of the ethanol mandate have argued that the requirement was nonetheless necessary in order to spur demand for and development of more advanced, environmentally friendly biofuel like cellulosic ethanol, which is converted into fuel from corn-farm leftovers. But there are two serious problems with cellosic ethanol. The first is that cellulosic ethanol turns out to be rather difficult to produce; despite EPA projections that the market would produce at least 5 million gallons in 2010 and 6.6 million in 2011, the United States produced exactly zero gallons both years—and just 20,069 gallons in 2012.

The second is that cellulosic ethanol is also bad for the environment. At least in the short-term, the corn-residue biofuels release about 7 percent more greenhouse gases than traditional fuels, according to a federally funded, peer-reviewed study that appeared in the journal Nature Climate Change last month.

The environmental evidence against ethanol seems to mount almost daily: Another study published last week in Nature Geoscience found that in São Paulo, Brazil, the more ethanol that drivers used, the more local ozone levels increased. The study is particularly important because it relies on real-world measurements rather than on models, many of which predicted that increased ethanol use would cause ozone levels to decline.

To make things worse, ethanol requirements are bad for cars and drivers. Automakers say that gasoline blended with ethanol can damage vehicles by corroding fuel lines and injectors. An ethanol glut caused by a misalignment of regulatory quotas and demand has helped drive up prices at the pump. And the product is actually worse: ethanol blends are less energy dense than regular gasoline, which means that cars relying on it significantly worse mileage per gallon.

American drivers have it bad, but the global poor have it far worse. Ethanol requirements at home have helped drive up the price of food worldwide by diverting corn production to energy, which dramatically reducing the available calorie supply. A 25-gallon tank full of pure ethanol requires about 450 pounds of corn—roughly the amount of calories required to feed someone for a year. Some 40 percent of U.S. corn crops go to ethanol production, which in effect means we’re burning food for automobile fuel rather than eating it. Studies by economists at the World Bank have found that a one percent increase in world food prices correlates with a half-percent decrease in calorie consumption amongst the world’s poor. When world food prices spiked between 2007 and 2008, between 20 and 40 percentof the effect was attributable to increased global reliance on biofuels. The effect on world hunger is simply devastating.

Ethanol lobbyists are still pretending the renewable fuels mandate is a success, and Senators from corn-friendly states in the Midwest are still urging the agency not to proceed with the proposed reduction to the mandate. But at this point, ethanol requirements have few serious defenders except the people who profit from its production and the politicians who rely on those people for votes and campaign contributions.

Judging by the cut it proposed last November, even the EPA seems to be wavering. A final regulation has yet to be submitted, but the proposal would reduce the amount of renewable fuels the agency requires this year from 18.15 billion gallons to 15.2 billion gallons. That’sif the EPA sticks to its original plan. The agency is under heavy pressure to moderate its proposed cuts, or avoid them entirely.

Those cuts, if approved, would represent a productive step forward. But they wouldn’t be enough. Congress should vote to repeal the renewable fuel standard entirely. The federal government shouldn’t be telling people to burn less ethanol; it shouldn’t be telling anyone to burn any of it at all.

Unless we get a Conservative Majority….this will be our fate!!!

May 11, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Constraint payments in Scotland soar by 1,300%

Posted on 11/05/2014by Dougal Quixote

From the Times, 11th May 2014

PAYMENTS to green energy firms under a controversial government scheme that compensates them for wasted power have soared by more than 1,300%.

About £35m has been awarded since the start of the financial year to the owners of 21 renewables projects — all of them in Scotland — because Britain’s power network could not cope with the energy they produced.

The figure is a huge increase on the £2.4m paid in 2011-12 under the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change’s “connect and manage” scheme.

Campaigners warn the compensation payments, paid for by the public through their electricity bills, will continue to increase as more wind farms are built. A 2009 report by Frontier Economics for regulator Ofgem estimated the cost of the scheme would reach £2bn by 2020.

A Question not asked, or answered, yet is would constraint payments be made to a foreign country in the wake of a YES vote on the Independence issue. No doubt Salmond will say ‘YES’ and Danny Alexander ‘NO’. The SNP cadre will blame Westminster, again! But then when did you start believing what any politician says, especially “Tipp ‘Eck”! If it adds cost to rUK fuel bills I think the answer is self evident. Not politically acceptable to the the rUK electorate! Even Milibean should see that 😡 .

Unsustainable Renewable Energy Scam, showing fallout, as the pyramid crumbles.

May 11, 2014 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

Sun Sets on Spaniards’ Solar Power Dreams

World | Agence France-Presse | Updated: May 11, 2014 11:10 IST

AFP

The sun is reflected in a solar panel in a field of Mahora, near eastern Spanish city of Albacete on May 7, 2014.

Albacete: “The sun could be yours,” the Spanish government promised in 2007, encouraging citizens to invest in solar power. Many who did now wish they could give it back.

Tens of thousands of indebted Spaniards have found themselves lumbered with fields full of expensive solar panels whose subsidies have been unexpectedly cut in the financial crisis.

“How do I feel? Completely fooled,” said David Utiel, a 37-year-old teacher who invested in a solar plant, recalling the government’s sunshine slogan.

“Fooled, swindled, disappointed, disgusted.”

He was one of the 62,000 ordinary citizens in Spain who campaign groups say have been caught in a financial sun trap.

Along with 23 of his neighbours from Madrigueras, near the eastern city of Albecete, he jointly owns nearly 360 solar panels which stand in a field of wild grass and red poppies.

“It was the government that gave us the idea,” he said, walking at the foot of the vast black panels.

“It was supposed to be a good idea to put your money in the whole solar energy thing. They said it could be very profitable.”

In return for promises of a regular return, he invested 450,000 euros ($620,000) in the field in 2007.

“We are completely ordinary people, country people from the village. Some of us work in education, some in farming, others in small businesses,” he said.

“The idea was not to go chasing after subsidies and become millionaires or anything like that. It was to have some kind of pension.”

Long favoured by the state, renewable energies are now feeling the pain of Spain’s economic austerity policies.

Spain’s government is taking drastic measures to slash a 26-billion-euro electricity deficit after years of paying subsidies to keep prices down.

– Betting the farm –
“It’s the government that encouraged us to invest our savings to generate solar energy,” said Miguel Angel Martinez-Roca, president of ANPIER, an association of small sun power producers.

“It then started to apply retroactive cuts by law once the solar plants were already built. They changed the rules half way through the game.”

UNEF, another solar energy association, estimates that since 2007 earnings by owners of solar panels have fallen by up to half in the worst cases, with losses varying according to the type of installation.

It estimated that the complex series of subsidy cuts would cost owners 920 million euros in 2014.

Meanwhile solar companies owe 22 billion euros to the banks, it says.

“It’s a frankly awful situation. Thousands of Spanish citizens are trapped,” lumbered with solar plants costly to maintain, weak revenues and loans, said Martinez-Roca.

David, who mortgaged his house for the solar investment, has received just 3,000 euros in aid in the past six months, six times less than he pays in maintenance and loan repayments.

Another local man, Manuel Alonso Caballero, 39, left his job in the airport sector to set up his own solar power plant.

He says he invested nearly 1.5 million euros and risks losing it all. His farmer parents have had to mortgage their house as his guarantors.

“I went into the solar business because I really believed what they were saying and I really believed in renewable energy, but I realise now that I was wrong,” he said.

“I’ve lost any trust I had and I wouldn’t invest another euro in Spain.”

ANPIER has lodged complaints in the courts against the state and vows to turn to the European Union authorities if its case in Spain fails.

Martinez-Roca said the group is calling a demonstration in Madrid on June 21 against the government.

“We are not prepared to let them ruin us, insult us and cheat us like this.”

The Only ones who Gain, are the Rich Wind Pushers….the rest Lose, Big-time!

May 11, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Dick Warburton: is the RET worth the Pain inflicted on Families & Business?

May 11, 2014 by stopthesethings

As STT followers know, the RET Review Panel is headed up by Dick Warburton – a man who’s acutely aware of the pain being inflicted on Australian families and business by the mandatory Renewable Energy Target.

Since Dick was appointed to conduct the first thorough cost/benefit analysis of the mandatory RET ever undertaken, the wind industry and its parasites have been reduced to screaming “climate change denier” – as if that were some kind of immunising hex.

As pointed out previously, these boys are just working through the 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. From the hysterical ranting emanating from eco-fascist blogs – like the Climate Speculator, yes2ruining-us and ruin-economy – it appears they’ve got a lot more work to do before they finally come to grips with the demise of their beloved wind industry.

Adding to their grief is the fact that Dick Warburton is a hardened business-man, who couldn’t care less about the juvenile hectoring coming from the lunatic fringe of the hard-green-left. You know, the same sort of megaphone “diplomacy” seen on university campuses whenever the government proposes that the students might actually contribute a little more to their own education: same intellectually underdeveloped crowd, different ideological rant.

Here’s Dick being interviewed last Thursday on ABC Radio.

Wealthy can afford deficit tax levy: Dick Warburton
ABC Radio (AM)
Chris Uhlmann
8 May 2014

CHRIS UHLMANN: Treasurer Joe Hockey wanted a national conversation about the challenges facing the budget and he’s certainly got one. There’s been no end of the advice he’s received from interest groups and last week’s release of the Commission of Audit helped to pour rocket fuel on the debate.

Businessman Dick Warburton has advised governments from both sides and is currently heading the review of the Renewable Energy Target. Welcome to AM.

DICK WARBURTON: Oh thank you Chris, good to be here.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Well, Dick Warburton, is there a compelling need to reduce the size of government and to do it quickly?

DICK WARBURTON: I believe it is. I believe we’ve got not so much a crisis but the potential of a crisis if we don’t do something fairly quickly.

And one of the key areas that I would like to see is the reduction in the size of the government per se. Now that can be both federal and at state level. Admittedly this is a federal budget, I understand that, but nevertheless you need to start at both levels and there’s a lot of duplication between federal and state bureaucratic areas.

CHRIS UHLMANN: The footprint of government of course though is big and if you withdraw that money quickly from the economy you could crash it. Is that a risk?

DICK WARBURTON: Yes, it is a risk. Quickly clearly it’s a risk. It’s a matter of trying to do it as gently as possible without harming the growth as much as you can. You will harm growth, there’s no two ways about that, but not to crash the growth.

CHRIS UHLMANN: What do you think about having a deficit tax of 2 per cent levied on the those who pay the top tax bracket?

DICK WARBURTON: Look, I guess I’m one of those in that bracket and I’d have to say from a personal point of view, I don’t like to have an increase in tax. However, I do believe that is something that should be done. I believe this is a tax on some people who can afford to do it because the middle to the lower income people are likely to be hit with some of the cuts in some of their health and welfare and other social budget areas.

CHRIS UHLMANN: And you don’t buy the argument again that that’s taking money out of the economy which will affect demand?

DICK WARBURTON: I don’t think it will take that much money out of the economy because I think at that level it won’t have such a big impact as something in the smaller, lower to middle income areas would have. I don’t think it will have that much of an effect.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Now, of course you’ve got a background in manufacturing as well. Should the age of entitlement for business be over too? Should we see an end to many of the industry assistance programs that government provides?

DICK WARBURTON: I think we should be looking at all those. Now which ones you do or use again is a matter of how to balance the area between cutting expenditure and trying to make sure you maintain growth. Yes, I believe we should look at those but I don’t have any particular ones that I think you should focus on and say let’s cut those.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Look, as manufacturing declines everyone talks about the jobs of the future. Where do you think those jobs will come from? How will we manufacture the jobs of the future?

DICK WARBURTON: Well, in the past we’ve always seen, I mean – and always is the word I use – always seen how those jobs eventually get absorbed into the rest of the community.

I remember living in South Australia when Mitsubishi stopped in South Australia and it was an absolute case of doom and gloom. But within a space of one year to two years, those jobs were all repositioned throughout the rest of the economy. And I think that will be the case – and remember the number of jobs lost is quite traumatic to those who are affected by it, significantly affected, but in the totality of the working force, it’s actually a relatively small proportion.

CHRIS UHLMANN: What has been the thing that’s hammering the economy most recently? Is it the high Australian dollar? Is it something that really is out of the Government’s hand?

DICK WARBURTON: Well, the dollar, the exchange rate is definitely out of the, totally out of the Government’s hand. That is a monetary policy factor. But remember the exchange rate, there’s a good and bad thing. It depends what side of the fence you’re on. There are certain people who would love to see a higher exchange rate, it would affect, it would help them immensely. Other would like to see a lower one. So I’ve always seen the exchange rate as being something in the eye of the beholder.

CHRIS UHLMANN: And do you think that the monetary policy settings are right at the moment, 2.5 per cent? We’ve moved from an easing bias, if you like, with the Reserve Bank to one where it’s now neutral.

DICK WARBURTON: Yes, I think it’s exactly in the right position.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Now, you are reviewing the Renewable Energy Target at the moment; that is that Australia have 20 per cent of its energy sourced from renewables by 2020. That is driving up the cost of power, but is that a cost that is worth bearing because of the long-term environmental benefit?

DICK WARBURTON: Well, what we’ve got to look at in this review is not just the environmental benefits; we’re looking at the economic benefits, we’re looking at the social benefits. We have to take into account the effect on the electricity prices, which we’re doing, and we’re modelling to see just exactly what that is. And when we’ve completed all of those studies and the review of all the submissions that have come in and the modelling, then we’ll come up with a decision to give to the Government.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Is it your sense at the moment that the economic costs are too high because the cost of power is too high?

DICK WARBURTON: Well, it’s certainly having an effect, Chris. Whether it’s too high, we’ll find out as we get into the study.

CHRIS UHLMANN: What kind of effect is it having? Just give us a sense of the cost of power and how the renewable energy target has driven that up over time.

DICK WARBURTON: Well, we’re looking at emissions, we’ve got a target for an emission control of 5 per cent. That’s a bipartisan approach. And certainly renewables have their place in that particular equation.

I’d like to believe that we’ll look at this and say, now, is the cost of the RET worth the economic pain that you get by imposing it on the electricity consumers?

CHRIS UHLMANN: And there’s no doubt that there is economic pain because of that?

DICK WARBURTON: Yes there is, yes there is economic pain. It is one part of the equation. It is not the whole part of the equation.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Is the cost of energy doing damage to business in Australia?

DICK WARBURTON: Depends on the business, Chris. Some of the businesses that use relatively small bits of electricity, obviously it hasn’t got a great effect. But there are industries that use large quantities of electricity and in those places they’ve been telling us this is having a major impact on their cost side of the balance sheet.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Well, one of the areas where Australia always had a competitive advantage was that energy in the past here was relatively cheap and abundant. That equation has changed. Are you concerned about that?

DICK WARBURTON: Well, it is still cheap and abundant if you look at the black coal and the brown coal.

CHRIS UHLMANN: But we’re not looking at that though, are we? We’re looking at more renewables.

DICK WARBURTON: Well, no we’re not necessarily looking at all, we are looking at renewables in our study but we’re trying to look at the overall generation of electricity, what are the factors that affect the generation, and we’ll be looking at all types including renewables.

CHRIS UHLMANN: And when will your review report?

DICK WARBURTON: We’re due to report in July, Chris.

CHRIS UHLMANN: That is businessman Dick Warburton who is currently reviewing the Renewable Energy Target.
ABC

STT thinks that Dick was simply being politic, by faintly suggesting the economic pain being inflicted by the RET on families and business might (somehow) be worth it.

When the Panel met with miners, business groups and wind industry rent-seekers a few weeks back he was less circumspect – telling the audience that the review has nothing to do with “climate change” or CO2 emissions – and that it’s primarily “concerned with the cost impacts of renewable energy in the electricity sector” (see our post here).

The consultants, ACIL Allen have already found that the mandatory RET (set to expire in 2031 – unless scrapped beforehand) will involve a transfer of (at least) $53 billion from power consumers to wind power generators – in the form of RECs issued to them and added to all Australian power bills. That, in anybody’s books, is a whopping cost. And the cost of the REC Tax to power consumers is just the tip of the power-price-punishment iceberg (see our post here).

Wind power cannot and will never reduce CO2 emissions in the electricity sector – simply because 100% of its capacity is backed up 100% of the time by fossil fuel generation to account for the fact it disappears for hours every day – and for days on end – producing nothing more than hollow promises of “powering” millions of Australian homes (see our posts hereand here and here and here and here and here).

Thanks to the mandatory RET – in less than a decade – Australia has gone from having the lowest power prices in the world to the highest. And, despite wild claims from the wind industry about reducing CO2 emissions, it has failed to produce a shred of credible evidence to that effect: indeed, all the evidence points in the opposite direction (see this European paper here; this Irish paper here; this English paper here; and this Dutch study here).

And there is, of course, the renewables “pinup girl”, Germany as the perfect empirical (and disastrous) case study. The Germans have poured 100s of €billions into subsidising wind and solar over the last decade and, despite all that pain, Germany has seen its CO2 emissions increase not decrease (see our post here). A very costly “oops”.

The conclusion of any cost/benefit analysis of the mandatory RET – and its bastard child – wind power – can only be: ALL PAIN and NO GAIN.

Why not let the Panel know what you think (see our post here). Submissions close on 16 May.

Burden of Proof Should be on Wind Proponents!

May 7, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

HALT won’t back down after ERT rejects Armow Wind appeal

Credit: By Steven Goetz, Kincardine News | Tuesday, May 6, 2014 | www.shorelinebeacon.com ~~

The Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT) dismissed an appeal filed against the approved Armow Wind project, rejecting claims the project will cause serious harm to human health.

But instead of backing down, a local group of anti-wind activists — Huron-Kinloss Against Lakeside Turbines (HALT) — will take the fight to divisional court and beyond.

“We have always seen this as having the potential to go all the way to the Supreme Court,” said HALT’s Kevin McKee in a telephone interview on May 2.

McKee said the group never expected to win at the ERT, but had to file the appeal before divisional court would consider their legal challenge.

“We weren’t surprised by the result,” he said. “Citizen groups like our own have been 0-for-25 at these ERT hearings. It is nearly impossible to win.”

“By their standard, it would be hard to prove asbestos would cause harm,” he said.

Barring intervention from a court, the April 22 decision clears the way for Samsung-Pattern to erect a 92-turbine, 180-megawatt wind farm in the Municipality of Kincardine, on land northeast of the North Line and Highway 21.

The appeal was organized and funded by HALT and its partners, but filed on behalf of Ken and Sharon Kroeplin — whose 100-acre family farm is located within 600 metres of one of the planned turbines.

The ERT dismissed their claims, writing in its lengthy decision that the Kroeplins “failed to establish, on a balance of probabilities” that the project “will cause harm to human health.”

In its findings, the ERT wrote that it wasn’t enough for the Kroeplins to show “the potential for harm,” but the onus was on them to “prove that a project will cause harm.”

The ERT wrote that so-called “post-turbine witnesses” — people who have reported health conditions and symptoms they believe have been caused or exacerbated by living near wind turbines — did not prove that turbines were the cause of their ailments during their testimony at the nine days of hearings held on Kincardine.

[rest of article available at source]

Rational, Intelligent Climate Scientists, are Skeptical of AGW….No wonder!

May 7, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

1) Lennart Bengtsson: He Knows How Little We Know
Basler Zeitung, 7 May 2014

Hans Jörg Müller

One of the most eminent climate scientists, the Swede Lennart Bengtsson, has defected to the camp of climate sceptics. For the climate debate, this could have beneficial effects.

«Nur teilweise verstanden»: Der schwedische Klimaforscher Lennart Bengtsson mahnt zur Besonnenheit.

“Only partially understood”: The Swedish climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson calls for prudence and moderation.

How the global climate will develop in coming years and decades, and what influence mankind has upon the climate, is a question that has been discussed with almost religious fervor until a few years ago. That is, there were no discussions really; rather, one of the two parties declared the other insane: “climate denier“ was the term used for those who were of the opinion that global warming does not take place or that it may be warming less rapidly as most scientists believed. In any case, the human impact on climate change was far from proven.

The similarity between “climate denier” and Holocaust denier was intentional: the term should insinuate that anyone who deviated from the widely prevailing consensus was a crank, possibly driven by sinister motives. Above all, very few climate sceptics were leading experts, and this was probably the alarmists’ strongest argument. While climatologists and meteorologists warned and warned, those who were becalming and moderate were often economists. As one of the leading climate sceptics, one ex-politician stood out: Nigel Lawson, Britain’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer and the chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

Thaw

Gradually, however, the ice seems to be melting – if not at the polar caps, then at least in the climate debates: for the first time, a widely recognized expert has changed camps. Lennart Bengtsson , the Swedish climatologist, meteorologist and former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, has now joined the GWPF’s academic advisory council.

After his decision was announced Bengtsson was attacked, says Lawson, which shows what kind of emotions the issue can still generate. The reason cited by the 77-year-old scientist for his decision comes in a bone-dry scientific language: The relationship between greenhouse gases and global warming was “complex and only partially understood,” Bengtsson wrote in a commentary for the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

Apart from that, all empirical observations showed that global warming has been “no serious problem up to now.” How the climate would develop in the future only model simulations could show, and these were rather “problematic”.

Nothing is settled

Bengtsson’s conclusion: “It would be wrong to conclude from the IPCC report and similar reports that the science is settled.” Against this background, so the professor, it would be wrong to undertake any energy transition hastily.

Bengtsson’s arguments do not sound like the radicalism of old age. Rather, he exhorts his colleagues to be more prudent and empirical. For the uninitiated, this approach may be comforting, because the climate debate has long been a highly complex issue. Now, for the first time, an expert like Bengtsson admits that he and others like him fare little better: how the world’s climate will develop in coming years and decades remains pure speculation.

Translation Philipp Mueller

2) Dispute Over Global Warming: Respected Meteorologist Joins Climate Sceptics
Spiegel Online, 5 May 2014

Axel Bojanowski

A delicate academic matter has disrupted the climate science community: One of the most respected climatologists, Emeritus Max Planck Director Lennart
Bengtsson, has switched to the camp of climate sceptics. In this SPIEGEL ONLINE interview he explains his surprising decision.

One of the most renowned climatologists has changed sides. Lennart Bengtsson, former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, one of the world’s leading climate research centres, has joined the Academic Advisory Council of theGlobal Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)…

Bengtsson has always been known for his moderate viewpoints during the hot climate debates of the 1990s. In a SPIEGEL ONLINE interview, he explained his move into the camp of skeptics.

About the person
The meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson, born in 1935, was director of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts from 1981 to 1990, then director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, one of the world’s leading climate research centers. Since his retirement in 2000, he has worked as a professor at the University of Reading in England. He has been given many awards, among them the German Environmental Award of the Federal Foundation for the Environment. He has dealt mainly with the modeling of climate and weather.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Bengtsson, why have you joined the climate sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation?

Bengtsson: I think it is important to enable a broad debate on energy and climate. We urgently need to explore realistic ways to address the scientific, technical and economic challenges in solving the energy problems of the world and the associated environmental problems.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why do you think the lobby (sic) group GWPF is particularly suitable?

Bengtsson: Most members of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council are economists, and this is a chance for me to learn from some of these highly qualified experts in areas outside my own expertise. I want to contribute there through my meteorological knowledge to open the debate.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But the people at GWPF do not have the reputation of reconsidering their opinions. Have you also become a so-called climate sceptic?

Bengtsson: I have always been a skeptic, and I think that is what most scientists really are.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But were you not one of the alarmists 20 years ago? Do you think your position at that time was wrong?

Bengtsson: I have not fundamentally changed my opinion in this area. And I have never considered myself an alarmist, but as a scientist with a critical eye. In this sense, I have always been a skeptic. I have used most of my career to develop models for predicting the weather. I have learned the importance of forecasting validation, i.e. the verification of predictions with respect to what has really happened. So I am a friend of climate forecasts. But the review of model results is important in order to ensure their credibility.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: And here you see a demand for climate research?

Bengtsson: It is frustrating that climate science is not able to validate their simulations correctly. The warming of the Earth has been much weaker since the end of the 20th century compared to what climate models show.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But the IPCC report discusses these problems in detail.

Bengtsson: Yes, but it does not do so sufficiently critical. I have great respect for the scientific work that goes into the IPCC reports. But I see no need for the endeavor of the IPCC to achieve a consensus. I think it is essential that there are areas of society where a consensus cannot be enforced. Especially in an area like the climate system, which is incompletely understood, a consensus is meaningless.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You complain about the strong tendencies towards politicisation in climate research. Why do you join now a political (sic) organisation?

Bengtsson: I was fascinated my whole life by predictions and frustrated by our inability to make forecasts. I do not think it makes sense to think for our generation that we will solve the problems of the future – for the simply reason that we do not know future problems. Let us do a thought experiment and go back to May 1914: Let us try from the perspective of that point in time to make an action plan for the next hundred years – it would be pointless!

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you suggest we should carry on with business as usual just because forecasts are complicated?

Bengtsson: No, but I think the best and perhaps only sensible policy for the future is to prepare society for adaptation and change. In 25 years the world will have nine to ten billion people. This will require twice as much primary energy as today. We need to foster new science and technology. We need a more open approach, especially here in Europe, which includes the issues of nuclear energy and genetic engineering, in order to supply the growing world population with energy and food.

Translation Philipp Mueller

3) Judith Curry: U.S. National Climate Assessment Report
Climate Etc., 6 May 2014

My main conclusion from reading the U.S. National Climate Assessment Report report is this: the phrase ‘climate change’ is now officially meaningless. The report effectively implies that there is no climate change other than what is caused by humans, and that extreme weather events are equivalent to climate change. Any increase in adverse impacts from extreme weather events or sea level rise is caused by humans. Possible scenarios of future climate change depend only on emissions scenarios that are translated into warming by climate models that produce far more warming than has recently been observed.

Some of the basic underlying climate science and impacts reported is contradictory to the recent IPCC AR5 reports. Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger have written a 134 page critique of a draft of the NCADAC report [link].

Even in the efforts to spin extreme weather events as alarming and caused by humans, Roger Pielke Jr. has tweeted the following quotes from the Report:

“There has been no universal trend in the overall extent of drought across the continental U.S. since 1900″

“Other trends in severe storms, including the intensity & frequency of tornadoes, hail, and damaging thunderstorm winds, are uncertain”

“lack of any clear trend in landfall frequency along the U.S. eastern and Gulf coasts”

“when averaging over the entire contiguous U.S., there is no overall trend in flood magnitudes”

As a I wrote in a previous post on a draft of the report, the focus should be on the final Chapter 29: Research Agenda, which outlines what we DON’T know. Chapter 28 Adaptation is also pretty good. Chapter 27 Mitigation is also not bad, and can hardly be said to make a strong case for mitigation. Chapter 26 on Decision Support is also ok, with one exception: they assume the only scenarios of future climate are tied to CO2 emissions scenarios.

An interesting feature of the report is Traceable Accounts – for each major conclusion a Traceable Account is given that describes the Key Message Process, Description of evidence base, New information and remaining uncertainties, Assessment of confidence based on evidence. The entertainment value comes in reading the description of very substantial uncertainties, and then seeing ‘very high confidence’. This exercise, while in principle is a good one, in practice only serves to highlight the absurdity of the ‘very high confidence’ levels in this report.

White House

Apparently President Obama is embracing this Report, and the issue of climate change, in a big way, see this WaPo article For President Obama A Renewed Focus On Climate. Motherboard has an interesting article How extreme weather convinced Obama to fight climate change.

In an interesting move, Obama Taps TV Meteorologists to Roll Out New Climate Report, which describes how Obama is giving interviews to some TV weathermen. It will be interesting to see how this strategy plays out, since TV weathermen tend to be pretty skeptical of AGW.

The politics on this are interesting also, see especially these two articles
White house set to lay out climate risks as it touts U.S. energy boom
Podesta: Congress can’t stop Obama on global warming

JC reflections

While there is some useful analysis in the report, it is hidden behind a false premise that any change in the 20th century has been caused by AGW. Worse yet is the spin being put on this by the Obama administration. The Washington Post asks the following question: Does National Climate Assessment lack necessary nuance? In a word, YES.

The failure to imagine future extreme events and climate scenarios, other than those that are driven by CO2 emissions and simulated by deficient climate models, has the potential to increase our vulnerability to future climate surprises (see my recent presentation on this Generating possibility distributions of scenarios for regional climate change). As an example, the Report highlights the shrinking of winter ice in the Great Lakes: presently, in May, Lake Superior is 30% cover by ice, which is apparently unprecedented in the historical record.

The big question is whether the big push by the White House on climate change will be able to compete with this new interview with Monica Lewinsky 🙂

4) We Can Easily Adapt To Sea Level Changes, New Report Says
Breitbart London, 7 May 2014

James Delingpole

Attempts to stem sea level rises by reducing CO2 levels in order to “combat” global warming are a complete waste of time says a new report by two of the world’s leading oceanographic scientists.

Over the last 150 years, average global sea levels have risen by around 1.8 mm – a continuation of the melting of the ice sheets which began 17,000 years ago.

Satellite measurements (which began in 1992) put the rate higher – at 3mm per year. But there is no evidence whatsoever to support the doomsday claims made by Al Gore in 2006 that sea levels will rise by 20 feet by the end of the century, nor even the more modest prediction by James Hansen that they will rise by 5 metres.

Such modest rises, argue oceanographer Willem P de Lange and marine geologist Bob Carter in their report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, are far better dealt with by adaptation than by costly, ineffectual schemes to decarbonise the global economy.

They say:

No justification exists for continuing to base sea-level policy and coastal management regulation upon the outcomes of deterministic or semi-empirical sea-level modelling. Such modelling remains speculative rather than predictive. The practice of using a global rate of sea-level change to manage specific coastal locations worldwide is irrational and should be abandoned.

It is irrational not least because it is based on a complete misunderstanding of the causes and nature of sea-level rises. There are parts of the world where the sea level is rising, others where it is falling – and this is dependent as much on what the land is doing (tectonic change) as on what the sea is doing.

In other words – a point once made very effectively by Canute – it is absurdly egotistical of man to imagine that he has the power to control something as vast as the sea. The best he can hope to do is to adapt, as previous generations have done, either by deciding to shore up eroding coastal areas or abandon them and move further inland.

And for those still in doubt, here is what Vincent Courtillot, Emeritus professor of geophysics at Paris Diderot University has to say in his introduction to the report:

Sea level change is a naturally occurring process. Since the last glacial maximum, some 18,000 years ago, de-glaciation has taken place and this natural global warming has led to sea-level rise of on average 120 m or so. At some times, pulses of melt water coming from large peri-glacial lakes led to rates of sea level rise as high as 3 m per century. The rate slowed down some 7000 years ago and since then has been naturally fluctuating by only a few metres. The remaining global sea-level rise has been about 20 cm in the 20th century. Has this led to global disasters? The answer is no. If the projected rise over the 21st century is double what was seen in the 20th, is it likely that it will result in global disasters? Again, the answer is most likely no; human ingenuity, innovation and engineering, and the proper material and financial resources should solve local problems if and when they arrive, as they have in the 20th century.

Corruption is the Only Reason Why they won’t Research Health Effects from Wind Turbines!

May 7, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Nurses for Safe Renewable Power

Looking for a healthy environment for everyone

03MAY 2014

RNAO two years ago: a sad day for nursing

CEO of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario Doris Grinspun is directing the RNAO’s annual event which consists of meetings, a gala banquet, and of course, the Annual General Meeting for members.

We recall the AGM of two years ago, when two nurses plus an RNAO chapter, put forward a resolution to ask for support for clinical research into the field of environmental noise produced by industrial-scale wind turbines, and further, as a second part of the resolution, that a moratorium on wind power developments be requested until the results of such research are released and analyzed.

The motion was defeated but not before there were dirty tricks aplenty on the part of RNAO staff (the director of research actually interrupted the resolution proponents’ session with voting delegates, so much so that delegates complained they were not able to speak or ask questions), misdirection was given about how much information could be provided to the delegates, and finally, the proponents’ presentation time was cut off by the chair—who incidentally, and completely illegally, spoke out against the motion before introducing it to the assembly. Easily a dozen delegates abstained from the vote, calling out to the chair that they wanted to hear more, but to no avail. The motion was defeated. (The chair also, erroneously, told the proponents that they would not be able to bring the resolution forward again for TWO YEARS. This is false and is not in the RNAO bylaws.)

So, where are we today? We actually have two clinical studies ongoing in Canada, one by Health Canada, and the other by the Renewable Energy Technology and Health (RETH) team at the University of Waterloo. The RETH team has already presented very preliminary results in poster format at a meeting earlier this year, showing a significant association between the noise from turbines and sleep disturbance.

We also have more studies from a variety of sources, including a recent article by otolaryngologist Dr Alec Salt whose work is increasingly showing a DIRECT link between the noise and vibration/infrasound produced by the machines used to generate power from wind energy and health effects.

http://oto2.wustl.edu/cochlea/wind.html

The growing research on the effects of exposure to the noise and infrasound on children is disturbing.

We also have in Ontario an approval process for wind power projects that is being revealed as sloppy and indicative of the provincial government’s blind support for wind power. Requests have been made for a review by the Ombudsman of the review and approval process, because documents being presented as complete are in fact inaccurate, incomplete, or sometimes completely absent. There are also judicial reviews pending for the approval of individual projects, such as Amherst Island, as the inaccuracies of the documentation supporting the safety of the proposed power developments are egregiously incomplete.

The Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario prepared a report that was released in 2010 based on work done in 2009, which maintained there were no direct causal links between the turbine noise and health (the government does not believe infrasound is important and will not even have a protocol to measure it until 2015), which the government and successive Environmental Review Tribunals rely on today expediently.

Complaints of excessive noise and poor health are in the hundreds in Ontario: the Ministry of the Environment has admitted in Tribunal hearings that it relies on the computer noise modelling supplied by the power developers. In other words, if a power project modelling shows it isn’t supposed to make noise at a certain level, then it surely can’t, and the Ministry does not even bother to send staff out to check.

Ontario families have become homeless. In December of the year the RNAO engineered the failure of the resolution of members to support research, 20 families went to Council in the City of Kincardine, requesting funds for emergency housing, as they had had to leave their homes due to the noise.

Today, more than 80 communities have passed bylaws or resolutions to say they are Not Willing Hosts to wind power because of the problems. Today, a coalition of communities is working together to create a noise nuisance bylaw to protect their residents at night from the turbine noise. Today, Ontario communities are taking advantage of every loophole, or minor power they have left after the Draconian Green Energy Act removed all democracy for Ontario’s rural and small-town communities.

And today, Ontario citizens are having to deal with higher electricity bills than ever seen before in this province, traceable to the government’s unproven zeal for renewable sources of power (a cost-benefit analysis as recommended by the Auditor-General was never done). The results are widely feared to be energy poverty as families must choose whether to buy food or pay their electricity bill, as well as job losses and business failure.

All this because a group of business people persuaded Ontario to adopt wind power as a source of power generation to replace coal—wind power cannot replace anything because of its inefficiency and unreliability. Coal has been replaced in Ontario by natural gas. The power developers (many with ties to the Ontario Liberal Party) have made millions–billions–in provincial subsidy dollars for very little benefit to the people of Ontario. One of the strategies suggested to the wind power development lobby by a consultant, the Sussex Strategy Group, was to persuade health-related groups to support wind power as a way to engender public support for the development of power from wind; it appears the RNAO fell in line with the developers’ corporate strategy.

The Registered Nurses Association of Ontario had a chance two years ago to at least listen to a burgeoning community health problem and at least listen to its members whose concern was well founded and genuine.

But it did not.

That was a sad day for nursing in Ontario, and leaves many questions as to the quality of leadership and the ties between politicians and nursing leadership.

In the meantime, the people of rural and small-town Ontario, and the health care professionals who live there and work within these communities, got no support from the organization that claims to “speak out for health.”

Faux-Green Energy is Killing our Wildlife, and Destroying Significant Birding Areas.

May 6, 2014 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

Red kites agonizing under wind turbines, State of Navarre, Spain.
- courtesy of GURELUR

ANIMALS, GUEST AUTHOR

HOW MUCH WILDLIFE CAN USA AFFORD TO KILL?

APRIL 30, 2014 7 COMMENTS

America’s wind farms are actually slaughtering millions of birds and bats annually

By Mark Duchamp

The Obama administration is issuing 30-year permits for “taking” (killing) bald and golden eagles. The great birds will be legally slaughtered “unintentionally” by lethal wind turbines installed in their breeding territories, and in “dispersion areas” where their young congregate (e.g. Altamont Pass).

By chance (if you believe in coincidences), a timely government study claims wind farms will kill “only” 1.4 million birds yearly by 2030. This new report is just one of many, financed with taxpayers’ money, aimed at convincing the public that additional mortality caused by wind plants is sustainable. – It is not.

Dr. Shawn Smallwood’s 2004 study, spanning four years, estimated that California’s Altamont Pass wind “farm” killed an average of 116 Golden Eagles annually. This adds up to 2,900 dead “goldies” since it was built 25 years ago. Altamont is the biggest sinkhole for the species, but not the only one, and industry-financed research claiming that California’s GE population is stable is but a white-wash.

Eagles are not the only victims. Smallwood also estimated that Altamont killed an average of 300 red-tailed hawks, 333 American kestrels and 380 burrowing owls annually – plus even more non-raptors, including 2,526 rock doves and 2,557 western meadowlarks.

In 2012, breaking the European omerta on wind farm mortality, the Spanish Ornithological Society (SEO/Birdlife) reviewed actual carcass counts from 136 monitoring studies. They concluded that Spain’s 18,000 wind turbines are killing 6-18 million birds and bats yearly.

Extrapolating that and similar (little publicized) German and Swedish studies, 39,000 U.S. wind turbines would not be killing “only” 440,000 birds (USFWS, 2009) or “just” 573,000 birds and 888,000 bats (Smallwood, 2013), but 13-39 million birds and bats every year!

However, this carnage is being covered up by self-serving and/or politically motivated government agencies, wind industry lobbyists, environmental groups and ornithologists, under a pile of misleading studies paid for with more taxpayer money.

Wildlife expert Jim Wiegand has documented how areas searched under wind turbines are still confined to 200-foot radiuses, even though modern monster turbines catapult 90% of bird and bat carcasses much further. Windfarm owners, operating under voluntary(!) USFWS guidelines, commission studies that search much-too-small areas, look only once every 30-90 days, ensuring that scavengers remove most carcasses, and ignore wounded birds that happen to be found within search perimeters. (Details at MasterResource.org)

These research protocols are designed to guarantee extremely low mortality statistics, hiding the true death tolls – and the USFWS seems inclined to let the deception continue. In addition, bird mortality data are now considered to be the property of windfarm owners, which means the public no longer has a right to know.

Nevertheless, news has leaked that eagles are being hacked to death all across America. This is hardly surprising, as raptors are attracted to wind turbines. They perch on them to rest or scan for prey. They come because turbines are often built in habitats that have abundant food (live or carrion) and good winds for gliding.

Save the Eagles International (STEI) has posted photographs of raptors perched on nacelles or nonmoving blades, and ospreys building a nest on a decommissioned turbine. Moving blades don’t deter them either: videos show a turkey vulture perched on the hub of a spinning turbine, and a griffon vulture being struck. Birds perceive areas traveled by spinning blades as open space, unaware that blade tips are moving at up to 180 mph. Many are focused on prey. These factors make wind turbines “ecological death traps,” wherever they are located.

By 2030, the United States plans to produce 20% of its electricity from wind. That’s nearly six times as much as today, from three or four times as many turbines, striking more flying creatures due to their bigger size (even the mendacious study predicting 1.4 million bird kills recognizes this). Using the higher but still underestimated level of mortality published by Smallwood in 2013, by 2030 our wind turbines would be killing over 3 million birds and 5 million bats annually.

But this is shy of reality by a factor of ten, because 90% of casualties land outside the search perimeter and are not counted. We are thus really talking about an unsustainable death toll of 30 million birds and 50 million bats a year – and more still if we factor in other hide-the-mortality tricks documented by STEI.

This carnage includes protected species that cars and cats rarely kill: eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, condors, whooping cranes, geese, bats and many others. The raptor slaughter will cause rodent populations to soar. Butchery of bats, already being decimated by White Nose Syndrome, will hammer agriculture.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the value of pest-control services to US agriculture provided by bats ranges from $3.7 billion to as much as $53 billion yearly. These chiropters also control forest pests and serve as pollinators. A Swedish study documents their attraction from as far as nine miles away to insects that swarm around wind turbines. Hence the slaughter.

Wind lobbyists claim they need “regulatory certainty.” However, eagle “take” permits will also ensure extinction certainty – and ecological, agricultural, economic and social disasters that America cannot afford.
____________

Mark Duchamp is president of Save the Eagles International, a nonprofit conservation organization:www.SaveTheEaglesInternational.org and Chairman of WCFN, the World Council for Nature – www.wcfn.org

(Image at top of page: Red kites agonizing under wind turbines, State of Navarre, Spain. – courtesy of the association of ecologists GURELUR, Navarre, Spain)

Wind Turbines would NEVER pass a Cost/Benefit Analysis!

May 5, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Special report: The true cost of our wind farms

BY BEN ROBINSON, 4 MAY 2014 11.00AM.

Lambrigg Wind Farm near Kendal in the Lake District in northern EnglandAlamy

The true cost of the massive expansion of wind farms in England can today be revealed by a special Sunday Post investigation.

Staggering new figures show turbine operators have been handed taxpayer-funded subsidies of £7 billion in just over a decade. That means an average of £1,211 has been paid from the public purse every MINUTE since 2002.

The eye-watering costs are recouped by being added to fuel bills, leaving each household £178 worse off.

Now there is concern at the size of the subsidies being siphoned off for renewables at a time when 2.4 million people in England are living in fuel poverty.

The revelations come in the wake of Prime Minister David Cameron’s announcement that the Conservatives will end their support for onshore wind farms if they win the next election.

Tory MP Philip Davies who represents Shipley in West Yorkshire, said: “Not only are they a blight on the landscape, they are the most expensive, inefficient and unreliable form of energy.

“Many people are struggling to pay their energy bills and the dash for wind energy unnecessarily adds a considerable amount on to everyone’s bills in order to line the pockets of rich landowners.

“It is Robin Hood in reverse — taking money from the poorest in order to line the pockets of the richest.

“It is also making our manufacturers extremely uncompetitive when they are up against other firms based abroad who enjoy much cheaper energy bills.”

European law dictates the UK must achieve 15% of its energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020, which has sparked heavily subsidised incentives for large wind farms and individual turbines to be built.

We can reveal between 2002 and December 2013 wind farm owners received £7bn under the renewables obligation scheme which subsidises large-scale green energy production.

Introduced by the Labour Government to encourage investment in renewables, the money is recouped via a supplement added to all domestic and commercial electricity bills.

According to the Renewal Energy Foundation, since 2002 the levy supporting English renewables has added about £178 to the average UK household’s cost of living, with £89 of that in electricity charges alone.

These subsidies have bankrolled 259 operational wind farms with around 850 turbines.

Our probe has found northern England is bearing the brunt of the drive for renewables by hosting half the country’s wind farms. Using Government planning statistics, the Renewable Energy Foundation looked at the number of wind farms in operation or with planning permission across England.

It found Northumberland has the largest wind farm capacity of any county, with around 155 turbines spread over 19 farms, generating up to 302 megawatts (MW).

East Yorkshire is second highest, while Lancashire is sixth, Durham seventh and Cumbria eighth.

Don Brownlow, from Berwick-Upon-Tweed, who has battled a series of large-scale wind farms in Northumberland, claimed developers see the region as an easy target.

He said: “Contrary to popular belief this is not about the region being windy. Most of Northumberland outside the national park is fairly poor for that. The reason, first and foremost among developers, is landowner compliance.

“A lot of wind development in Northumberland has been old estates being broken up which means landowners have borrowed a lot of money to buy them and they see the opportunity to reduce their debts. We are also seen as having compliant local planning authority.”

Across the North West, North East and Yorkshire and the Humber there are 129 wind farms containing around 500 turbines already in operation — half of the entire country’s wind energy capacity.

But planning permission has been given for another 100 farms to be built which will add another 330 turbines to the landscape.

It means residents in the north will see a massive 70% increase in the number of turbines, while a further 150 turbines are in the planning system.

Dr John Constable, director of Renewable Energy Foundation, a UK charity publishing data on the energy sector, said: “The northern counties of England are bearing a disproportionate share of the national onshore wind burden.

“Not all of this focus can be explained by better wind conditions.

“Northumberland in particular is relatively windless. I’m afraid the explanation is that developers have picked on the rural north because it lacks the resources to defend itself in the planning system.

“Extremely high subsidies have overheated and corrupted the wind industry; site choice has been poor and little respect has been shown to the opinions of rural populations, whose local environments have too often been significantly damaged.”

A Department of Energy and Climate Change spokesperson said: “As you would expect, there are more wind farms where there is more wind.

“Wind farms will only get planning permission where the impacts – including visual impact, cumulative impact and impact on heritage sites – are acceptable.

“We have also changed the law to require wind farm developers to consult with local people before they put in a planning application.”

Top 10 counties with most wind farms

1. Northumberland Onshore wind capacity 311MW – Sites 19 – Approximate turbines 155

2. East Yorkshire – 302MW – sites 49 – turbines 151

3. Lincolnshire* – 281MW – sites 22 turbines – 141

4 Cambridgeshire – 273MW – sites 32 -turbines – 136

5. Northamptonshire – 185MW – sites 20 – turbines 92

6. Lancashire – 177MW – sites 23 – turbines – 88

7. Durham – 168MW – sites 24 – turbines – 84

8. Cumbria – 158MW – sites 38 – turbines – 79

9. Devon – 133MW – sites 22 – turbines – 66

10. Cornwall – 130MW – sites 86 – turbines – 65

*Historic county of Lincolnshire, comprised of Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire.

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Looking for a healthy environment for everyone

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Faux-Green Energy is Killing our Wildlife, and Destroying Significant Birding Areas.

HOW MUCH WILDLIFE CAN USA AFFORD TO KILL?

Wind Turbines would NEVER pass a Cost/Benefit Analysis!

Special report: The true cost of our wind farms